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In a 53-14 vote that took place days ago, South Dakota's legislative House passed legislation that makes arrest booking photos public records. The measure, which cleared the state's Senate in January, will be signed by Governor Dennis Daugaard.
With that signature on Senate Bill 25, (PDF) South Dakota becomes the 49th state requiring mug shots to be public records. The only other state in the union where they're not public records is Louisiana.
The South Dakota measure is certain to provide fresh material for the online mug shot business racket. These questionable sites post mug shots, often in a bid to embarrass people in hopes of getting them to pay hundreds of dollars to have their photos removed. The exposé I did on this for Wired found that some mug shot site operators had a symbiotic relationship with reputation management firms that charge for mug shot removals.
[...] The law allows for the release of mug shots, even including those of minors, for those arrested for various felonies. The law also allows agencies to refuse to hand over booking photos that are more than six months old. Agencies are entitled to recover costs "to provide or reproduce" mug shots.
(Score: 2) by Marand on Thursday March 16 2017, @11:10AM (3 children)
Simple things like the right to be considered innocent until convicted, little well being able to continue your life if found convicted and completed your time.
Theoretically you have this, in the sense that the justice system is supposed to work this way, but the government can't make people stop being people. If you're charged with a crime the general public will assume you're guilty right out if they find out about it, and employers will find other excuses to not hire you even if they can't legally discriminate.
It's made even worse by the media, which loves to make sensationalist claims and headlines about criminal accusations, but is extremely reluctant to mention when someone is found innocent, because doing that would mean they'd have to admit they dragged an innocent person through the mud for their own benefit. Better to either ignore it or (not so) subtly imply that the person still did it but cheated the system somehow. Oh, and you don't even have to be charged of doing anything illegal to get skewered by the media! You just have to get accused of the wrong kind of ethically questionable act, and the media will rake you over the coals without even bothering to check for the accuracy. Then you have that shadow hanging over you for the rest of your life.
TL;DR: Doesn't matter what rights you're supposed to have when people like to assume the worst and the media capitalises on it.
(Score: 2) by dry on Friday March 17 2017, @03:12AM (2 children)
Yet this story is about the various State governments empowering the media by publishing mug shots of non-convicted people. It sounds like the various American governments do a lot of the empowering. Shit they're one of the 2 countries in the world that still have the medieval classification of felon along with the segregation that goes along with it.
The government doesn't control people or the media but it does control itself and really doesn't seem to care about most basic rights.
(Score: 2) by Marand on Friday March 17 2017, @03:58AM (1 child)
Right. I wasn't trying to say "oh, the government is blameless here, it's just the media and people" or anything like that. Just observing that the government ostensibly does offer innocence until guilt is proven, but the unfortunate reality is that, even if the government had a perfect record of adhering to "innocent until proven guilty" in every way and at every level, the accused people will still end up ruined, because the public has an obsessive desire to look for and believe the worst in others, and the media capitalises on that. When there's blood in the water, nasty things show up to feed.
(Score: 2) by dry on Sunday March 19 2017, @03:24AM
The media is mostly interested in the infamous cases, rapes, murders, especially involving certain demographics are very popular. In a small town, the local paper might publish every court appearance or arrest if the government publishes the info. In a big town it is only certain cases that get the media attention.
It is the government that is publishing the arrests, it is government that is making mug shots available. An arrest doesn't really mean much, sometimes it is just to take a drunk of the street till they sober up and the cops are pretty well free to arrest anyone on the smallest suspicion. At least here, after arresting someone, they can hold them for a short while before they have to go in front of a Judge and actually lay charges, at which point things become public. No cameras in the court room so the media have to show up with pencil and paper to create a picture of a perp. In America the law enforcement, prosecution, and judging is so politicized that simple rights are routinely ignored in favour of looking like they're doing something.
These mug shots are not generally being published by the regular media, there's a whole new industry in publishing them to extort payment to not publish.
Perhaps it is a culture thing, here the right to privacy seems a lot higher then it is in the States and to me it just seems so wrong to have the government spearheading the violations of basic rights. Of course rights are always a trade off, with the most famous example being how far the right to swing your fist goes.