It could happen to anyone — you had one too many beers, forgot to turn on your headlights on the way home and got stopped by police. Next thing you know, you’re in the county jail, grimacing into a camera — your very first “mugshot.”
We all make mistakes. We learn from them and in the best case scenario, we move on.
But when our own embarrassing decisions become a public record, available on the Internet, they become lifelong stains that are nearly impossible to clean.
A New York Times article published online Saturday looked into a for-profit industry that is growing in numbers, dollars and search-engine optimization. Websites like http://www.justmugshots.com and http://florida.arrests.org aggregate content from law enforcement sites and republish criminal arrest information.
It’s a public service — people can go on these databases to find out if their blind date has a tainted record or if their potential employee is less immaculate than they seem on a resume. Arrest records are public information, and anyone is free to divulge it. That’s the way the constitutional first amendment protects these websites.
The content on these sites is not considered slander because the information is true. But while this civic service is considered legitimate, the money-making strategies employed by mugshot-aggregating sites is concerning, to say the least. It’s borderline extortion.
To get your picture taken down from these sites, The New York Times’ David Segal reported, you might have to pay up to $400, possibly more in special cases.
For the college kid who is applying to his or her first job, that sum can seem hefty but necessary. Most employers, when considering an applicant, perform Google background checks. When all you can do is call yourself an idiot a thousand times for driving home that one night with your headlights off, you’d do anything to rid any trace of it on the Internet. Since 2010, a few savvy entrepreneurs have taken up the opportunity, charging people to get their virtual record expunged.
Criminal arrests are public record, but the business of allowing people to pay off their humiliation is wrong.
People who can afford to spend a few hundred dollars to absolve themselves from an Internet jury are in the clear, allowing people who recycle the information to get rich for a formalized version of blackmail. I doubt these websites can claim they perform a duty to society when they’re allowing certain people to get off the hook and erase their own records.
Several state governments have tried to pass laws on mugshot postings, like a Georgia law that allows people to ask for their picture to be taken down if they can prove the charges have been dismissed. That and other laws have seemed to be ineffective, since content on the Internet is easily distributed to other pages. It’s a constant chase for absolution, even for people who have had their legal record expunged in court.
This debate is a balance between privacy and free speech. In this case, the First Amendment should prevail. Government shouldn’t restrict what the websites publish. However, I believe payment companies like MasterCard and PayPal are doing the right thing by cutting their ties with these types of businesses due to the nature of the negotiation.
Public records are a forte in our democratic society, but websites that leverage privacy with money are a mafia structure that should be taken down.
Daniela Guzman is a UF journalism senior. Her column runs on Mondays. A version of this column ran on page 6 on 10/7/2013 under the headline "Mugshot websites shouldn’t make money"
