Ever never found a mugshot you were searching for? You’re not alone. While it may seem like people are arrested and have their picture taken dozens of times, the truth is a bit different.
So, why are some mugshots not online? The answer very often boils down to legal constraints, policing discretion, and shifting digital ethics.
1. No Mugshot Required for All Arrests
An arrest doesn’t automatically lead to a mugshot being taken. Here’s why:
- No booking photo is taken if the person is cited and released with no jail time.
- This sometimes leads to low-level offenses being brushed off and full intake procedures being skipped when resources are stretched thin.
- Mugshot photography is often overlooked in some jurisdictions, particularly smaller or poorly funded ones.
Therefore, if a photo was never taken there is nothing out there.
2. State Privacy Laws
We can no longer look up specific mugshots in many US states:
- The cases normally reserve these mugshots in states such as California, New York, and Utah unless they relate to a public safety threat closely.
- Such privacy laws stop undue public embarrassment — especially in cases where the charges end up getting dropped or someone is found innocent.
- Others have restrictions on how much police can cooperate with mugshot-removal websites that ask for payment.
One of the reasons is that there is a legal shield that prevents some mugshots from appearing online even after someone is arrested.
3. Expungement: A Legal Eraser
Generally, when a record is expunged or sealed from public records, mugshots are also removed:
- All identifying arrest data may be ordered removed by courts.
- As a result, the particularized images are legally unavailable to all but law enforcement agencies.
- This process leaves no footprints for any passer-by to look up the person’s history on a search engine.
This means, that even if the mugshot was a one of many published it can disappear forever through this process.
4. Law Enforcement Discretion Varies
Different agencies have different policies:
- Mugshots are common releases in most police departments.
- Some hardly ever release photos, preferring to squirrel booking images into in-house databases.
- Because a federal law governing how mug shots may be disseminated does not exist, the ease of accessing such photos varies from state to state.
The result? An arrest in one city could come up, but the same offense elsewhere would be invisible on the web.
5. Search Engines and Takedown Requests
Just because a mugshot used to be online, doesn’t mean it has to:
- Mugshot sites are now being actively downranked in search results by Google.
- Lawyers or other individuals that offer reputation management services can request to have old or damaged information removed.
- When the case was dismissed or the result is a not guilty verdict, this tends to assist substantiation for removal.
Another reason why are some mugshots not online anymore is that they have been scrubbed from the server to hide reputations.
Takeaway: Not Every Arrest Lasts Online
An arrest is an arrest, even if it’s not online. A vast and increasing array of factors, from privacy laws to sealed records to agency discretion to takedown efforts to the criminal backgrounds of certain disturbers of the peace.
The internet never forgets, but for mugshots, sometimes it finds in its heart forgiveness.
