The General Assembly is close to taking action that would remove police mug shots of many criminal defendants from the public realm. It’s in direct contradiction to the public’s desire to stay informed about crime. Tell your lawmakers we don’t want this.
There are at least two things wrong with the mug shot measures — the way legislators are going about it and the bad consequences of such action.
First, rather than file a bill that clearly addresses the issue of access to police mug shots, proponents have tucked provisions into omnibus bills. One version was in the budget bill. Another is in a bill that started out as a way to regulate car headlights and mushroomed to include a smorgasbord of issues. Why hide such an important measure in an unrelated bill? That’s not the way we elected our senators and representatives to govern.
Second, a ban on the use of police mug shots by the media is a step toward keeping the public uninformed. In an effort to curb mug shot tabloids and websites that exploit these photos for profit — charging a price to take the photos offline — lawmakers have drafted legislation that could keep news organizations from being able to publish photos of suspects with stories about local crimes. The most recent proposal would exempt arrest mug shots of people charged with misdemeanors from the public records law. As confidential records, therefore, the mug shots couldn’t even be displayed on a detention center website. The mug shot of a person charged with a misdemeanor could only be released if and when the suspect is convicted — or sooner if law enforcement thought it was necessary for public safety reasons.
This could bar the public from seeing the vast majority of police mug shots in a timely manner. In 2011-12, the state’s district courts, which deal with misdemeanors, disposed of more than 676,000 criminal, non-traffic cases. By comparison, the superior courts, which deal with felonies and misdemeanor appeals, disposed of 141,452 criminal, nontraffic cases.
Clearly, the majority of arrests are for misdemeanors — crimes whose suspects’ photos would be hidden from the public, under this legislation. So if you were wondering if the John Doe recently charged with a crime is the same person you saw at your child’s school, you’ll have to wait until he was convicted to see his photo.
“It would limit the public’s right to see mug shots at the time of arrest entirely,” says John Bussian, a lobbyist for the N.C. Press Association.
Picture it — crime stories without photos of the suspects who were arrested.
The public has a right to know who is arrested, and that includes seeing arrest photos to help identify suspects. Slipping a provision to subvert this right into an unrelated omnibus bill shows haste and a lack of thoughtful consideration. Urge your legislators to keep arrest photos in the public record and available for publication.