Where to buy mugshots

Local police departments also sometimes publish arrest records on their own websites, although often only for a short period of time. In recent years, a number of for-profit websites have sprung up.

These sites search arrest records and the Internet for mugshots and post them on their own sites. While these sites present themselves as protectors of public safety, flushing out criminals, they often make money by charging people money to remove their images. Because numerous sites may publish a person's photo, removing or attempting to remove all of them from the Internet can be quite expensive. Some sites have offered free removal for certain people—for instance, those who have been exonerated or whose arrest did not result in charges —but it's not always clear how easy it is to obtain free removal.

Professional mugshot removal or reputation-management services exist to remove photos, but these too can be expensive. The way that courts and legislatures view mugshots looks to be evolving in the age of the Internet. In , a federal appeals court found that criminal defendants didn't have a privacy interest in their booking photos.

The court held that booking photos of defendants who had appeared in court during ongoing proceedings had to be released pursuant to the Freedom of Information Act. In , the same court overruled that decision, stating that people do indeed have a "non-trivial privacy interest in their booking photos. United States Dep't of Justice , F. Further, as a Pew Charitable Trusts article tells, at least a few people have sued over the continued display of their mugshots. State law is sometimes behind such a plaintiff, as where a statute makes it illegal for mugshot websites to charge people to remove their photos from those sites.

The article explains that one potential downside of that kind of ban is the loss of an effective way for people to get their photos taken down. Along similar lines, a law in Utah, for example, prohibits county sheriffs from providing a booking photo to anyone who requests the photo and will publish it or post it online and charge a fee to remove it.

Utah Code Ann. Also, a law in Oregon applies to anyone who operates a booking-photo website and charges to have a photograph and the name and personal information of the person in the photo removed. It applies where there's a written request to remove the photo and the request has documentation showing that the charges related to the arrest didn't result in a conviction, were reduced to "violations," or resulted in conviction but were expunged or set aside.

In this kind of situation, the website operator must remove the photo and related name and personal information from all its websites—for free and within 30 days of the request. While the second kind of law doesn't protect people who have actually been convicted of a crime, it does provide protection to many people, including those whose guilt was never proven beyond a reasonable doubt or whose names were cleared.

Despite the kinds of reform noted above, many people continue to suffer from their mugshots being posted online. Their struggle has inspired other ideas, like law enforcement agencies stepping in and using copyright law to get mugshots off websites.

Potential solutions to the problems posed by mugshot websites may sometimes lie outside the law. According to a New York Times article , some credit card companies and Paypal stopped processing payments to mugshot sites. Without a way to make money, the hope was that these sites would simply shut down. But if even one credit card company continues to process payments, the sites have an incentive to keep posting. And such websites can make money from advertisements even if they can't charge to take photos down.

Likewise, those who have committed serious crimes are more likely to have a mugshot circulating online than someone whose criminal charges were less significant.

Juveniles, whose criminal records are generally sealed from public view and completely expunged when they reach age 18, may have their mugshots released publicly if they commit a serious felony offense that results in them being charged as adults. Fugitives have always been the subject of widely-released mugshots, as in the F. Likewise police frequently release mugshots or composite sketches of suspects when they believe the person could be involved in a series of crimes. Many serial rapists and other career criminals have been implicated in new cases when their mugshots were prominently spread across many jurisdictions.

Cold cases, which have remained unsolved for many years, often get renewed interest when police release mugshots of suspects questioned in the crime.

Most states have enacted laws that specifically punish sex offenders rather harshly, particularly those who prey upon children or other vulnerable populations. If an individual is forced to register as a sex offender it means their mugshot is not only distributed by police but the mugshot must be posted in public places such as city hall and the town library.

Those on sex offender registries are usually specifically banned from entering areas around schools, playgrounds, and sites where children are likely to congregate. Many law enforcement agencies have become reticent about releasing mugshots of every person arrested due to the internet. Many states have implemented laws against these websites and their tactics, including California, which sued a prominent website.

Search Now. Conducting a search on Recordsfinder. You acknowledge that Recordsfinder. The claim for damages also extends to the costs of hiring an attorney, and any other legal or equitable relief. Because of this, SB does not restrict access to arrest records and booking photos by the media and interested individuals. The weight of this law was tested in when the California Attorney General Xavier Becerra filed extortion and money laundering charges against the owners of a website that published mugshot photos and charged a fee to remove them.

This was in response to an affidavit filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court highlighting payment of hundreds of dollars by California residents to have their booking photographs removed from the website. Some of the victims in the case include a Ventura resident sharing the same name with his late father arrested in but not charged with a crime, a Los Angeles man with an overturned rape conviction and another Los Angeles residents with a dropped charge.

Consequent on this charge, the four owners of the mugshot site were arrested in May Under the California Public Records Act CPRA , a resident has the statutory right to inspect a vast number of California's public records of which include arrest records. Mugshots are inclusive in arrest records along with other personal information including suspect's full name, date of birth, sex, physical characteristics, time of arrest, charges, etc.

In the state of California, some government websites provide avenues for viewing the mugshots of arrested individuals. These include inmate locator sites such as the California state archives or the website of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

These sites offer both current and historical arrest records where you can find mugshots of suspects or convicts arrested in the State. The California DCR has the database of all juvenile and adult criminals who are sentenced or on parole or perhaps on probation,and it is updated daily. Also, a visit to the California extension of the StateRecords. Alternatively, online directories of California jails also provide mugshots along with arrest information.

However, these directories mostly offer booking mugshots of inmates currently in custody.