Overloaded with too many print and online news sources already, I never pick up something to read at my local convenience store. Maybe that’s why I haven’t kept up with Busted Paper, a newspaper that publishes mugshots from Hennepin, Ramsey, Anoka, and Dakota counties. Stephanie Fox from the Twin Cities Daily Planet wrote a great article about the issues raised by the Minnesota paper and similar newspapers and websites around the country. Read “Busted Paper” and other mugshot magazines: Why they are—and will likely remain—legal.
MNCOGI board member Jane Kirtley was quoted in the article.
Mugshots.com includes on its website more than 11,000 words justifying why what they do is moral and legitimate, including strong legal and social arguments about legitimate public interest, open government, even tough love. A lot of people in law and the media agree.
“Many in the criminal justice system are appalled by public access to mugshots in papers and online,” said Jane Kirtley, Silha Professor of Media Ethics and Law at the School of Journalism and Mass Communications at the University of Minnesota.
“Their reaction is to say that it’s an invasion of privacy, there are unintended consequences, that it inflames the public. A lot of the members of the public are appalled, too. People forget that transparency in the criminal justice system is for the protection of the arrested. Secrecy imperils those in custody,” she says. “Public information should be accessible and there should always be a presumption of openness.”
The attitude is similar at the Minnesota ACLU, where executive Director Chuck Samuelson agreed that openness in the criminal justice system is vital for a free society.
“One of the things we had our revolution about in 1776 was secret police work by the government. That’s why we have the Fourth Amendment. Arrests must be public. If they are public, there must be a record of it and the government has to bring you into open court.”
“That’s the good side,” he said. “You don’t want situation like in Argentina. But the bad news is if it’s all public, so is your mugshot.”
Good arguments. I hope to avoid being arrested, so I can stay out of the Busted Paper and don’t have to pay money to get my image off websites like mugshots.com.
— Robbie LaFleur