Local police post mugshots on Pinterest, leading to a 57% boost in arrests

http://thenextweb.com/socialmedia/2012/12/07/local-police-post-mugshots-on-pinterest-leading-to-a-57-boost-in-arrests/

by 1337biz • 14 years ago

109 65 14 years ago

downandout5• 14 years ago

Something tells me that this will not be accompanied by a 57% decrease in crime rates, but will absolutely be accompanied by a 57% increase in imprisonment and legal expenditures to detain and prosecute these people. An argument can be made that, except in the case of dangerous fugitives, using a more efficient means of finding wanted people may cause more harm than good.

weego• 14 years ago

So you are suggesting that some laws aren't worth upholding because they aren't financially viable?

ericHosick• 14 years ago

They might be hinting at victimless crimes.

downandout5• 14 years ago

I'm suggesting that historical warrant service rates are used in calculating budgets, and making staffing and other decisions that will be hard to address in such a compressed period of time. One would assume this will result in a 57% increase in caseloads, which means 57% more time that cases take to make their way through court since more judges can't just magically appear. Most jails operate at or above capacity; a sudden 57% increase in inmates will result in all kinds of lawsuits and other expenses both for the inmates and for the counties that operate them.

Finally, yes, seeing minor crimes all the way through the court system is of questionable social value relative to the economic expense.

king_jester• 14 years ago

Some laws are not worth upholding or keeping, so arrests and court systems processing cases for those laws by definition aren't financially viable.

flyinRyan• 14 years ago

Well, ideally laws that don't make sense to enforce (e.g. drug laws) wouldn't even exist in the first place. Failing that, not enforcing them would be the next sensible step.

CJefferson3• 14 years ago

So you think we should just give up entirely on trying to stop, say burglars and car thieves?

downandout5• 14 years ago

That's not what I said. I said that pursuing relatively minor cases (which I would not include in your example) more aggressively than we already do will serve only to tie up the justice system and make it more difficult to prosecute more serious offenses because all of the resources will be expended on a massive influx of first time DUI's and minor drug possession cases.

DanBC6• 14 years ago

There are lots of theft on there.

It's probably true that just catching thieves does little to stop them from committing crime. Giving people treatment for addiction; giving them support for MH problems ('treatment' is a difficult concept for the problematic diagnosis of one of the personality disorders); and properly run restorative justice would be cheaper and do more to prevent repeated crime.

Unfortunately some people are not interested in that, and just want to punish offenders.

pjbringer• 14 years ago

Deterence is increased both by the severity of the punishment, but also by the certainty of receiving the punishment. I think most major crimes are committed by people who have comitted minor crimes. If getting caught for minor things becomes more likely, it may be less tempting to go down that path. There's a large body of work trying to evaluate the effects of both causes. Arguably, the US has gone way down in the realm of diminishing returns in terms of severity, especially when it come to drug laws. Of course this doesn't take away any of the potential downsides in terms of civil liberties of any approach that raises the certainty of getting punishment.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deterrence_(legal)

downandout5• 14 years ago

It's interesting that, according to that Wikipedia article, "...Research has shown that increasing the severity of a punishment does not have much effect on crime...". Someone should tell that to the state lawmakers where three strikes sentences are prevalent.

crikli• 14 years ago

Blog spam, inaccurate headline.

Original article on npr: http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2012/12/07/166678...

The boost was in 57% of "warrant services" whatever that means, not arrests. No numbers given for the increase in arrests, just that they "actually got more people."

nmcfarl• 14 years ago

That NPR article you point out (which is really way better than this one) claims:

    "Warrant services" is police speak for arrests.

DanBC6• 14 years ago

Thank you for that.

The Pinterest page is here (http://pinterest.com/themercury/wanted-by-police/)

I'd be interested to see if Google (or anyone) tried their face recognition on these photos and provide information to the police.

Adirael• 14 years ago

Muddy waters. What if (when) they fire a false positive?

notatoad2• 14 years ago

What information is face recognition going to provide? as per the pinterest page you linked, the police already know the suspect's name and information, they just can't find them. It's unlikely google or anybody else is going to get a current address for these people just by running facial recognition.

jacquesm3• 14 years ago

The war on drugs looks to be in full swing.

downandout5• 14 years ago

It means a 57% rise in arrests of those with outstanding warrants. Either the subject was already arrested, released, and didn't show up for court, or a warrant was issued for them by a judge based on a request by an officer and they can't locate the person to arrest them in the first place. Although many of these people were technically already in the system, the effect on the system is the same as a 57% rise in new arrests, since if a wanted person can't be located, they are not using a jail bed, their case is not taking up court docket space, and we aren't paying for their prosecution and in most cases their defense.

notatoad2• 14 years ago

"warrant services" = "serving a warrant".

It means arresting somebody when there is a warrant for their arrest. # of arrests includes when a cop sees somebody doing something and arrests them on the spot, warrant services is only arrests where the cops are out looking for somebody with the intention of arresting them for past crimes.

wazari972• 14 years ago

I'm not sure whether I'm supposed to upvote this post, if I do, does it mean I support the idea behind ? because I don't, I don't think that denunciation is right way to support justice ... but I'd like the post to go to the front page, the see HN comments about it!

guylhem• 14 years ago

Denonciations are a good thing if you believe a criminal should be arrested as a consequence of his initial actions.

Denonciations are a bad thing if you believe that someone who didn't get caught in the act should be able to escape

972 - est-tu de Martinique ?

gnud• 14 years ago

Denonciations are a bad thing when society can't seem to let criminals serve their time and then be done with it.

oes0• 14 years ago

There's also a third option, people who can't (at the time) afford a lawyer to represent them.

Even in minor court cases, to plead not guilty and take a case to trial costs thousands of dollars. In jail-able offenses, some municipal courts don't have public defenders. And if you are innocent and unwilling to take a plea deal, your only option can be spending $3000+ to defend yourself against a minor misdemeanor charge.

(I realize these people are mostly charged with felonies it seems.)

polyfractal• 14 years ago

Technically, upvoting an article merely means you think it is interesting, not that you support it. So you can in good conscious upvote this article if it is interesting and you want to see the discussion.

Unfortunately, most people treat up/downvotes as "agree/disagree", which is not actually the intended purpose. I routinely upvote quality comments even if I disagree with them, because the author has shared some interesting/well supported insight that provokes conversation (regardless of my personal feeling towards it)

westicle• 14 years ago

I upvoted your comment because I agreed with it, but then realised my upvote was for the wrong reasons.

On a side note - I think "in good conscience" is the more appropriate phrase in this circumstance.

manaskarekar• 14 years ago

"The tip line has been ringing off the hook. In fact, Drumheller says some people even called in to say they had seen their own mugshot online and have asked to turn themselves in to authorities."

What the fuck?

gk1• 14 years ago

Some people may not realize there's a warrant out for them.

pgroves• 14 years ago

The implication being that the police aren't doing a very good job of contacting people about warrants. The first they're hearing about it is by seeing themselves on Pinterest. Imagine the number of increased arrests if the police started using email.

pc86• 14 years ago

Exactly; the whole reason they're on this site is that the police can't find them. It's reasonable to believe a decent percentage of them would have no idea that they're wanted.

stusmall• 14 years ago

I've had a couple normally law abiding friends get arrested on warrants that they've had for years without knowing. It would be a traffic ticket from long ago that they either forgot about or their was a mix up in payment. Given time that ticket slowly turns into a warrant and eventually an embarrassing arrest.

benjamincburns2• 14 years ago

The police department in my home town (Utica, NY) has been posting arrest photos on Facebook for a couple of years now. I wish there were data to determine whether or not it was having an impact, and what kinds of impacts it's having.

Most people I know are pretty disgusted by it. They feel that publicizing arrests is fueling an already ripe negative PR image against the city and that posting arrest photos in a very public place leads people to assume that the arrested are guilty before they are convicted.

At the same time however, think of the deterrent it is to "young punk" type criminals to have their mugshot posted in a public forum for all of their friends/family to see and for their neighbor's comments.

I wonder if those who made arrest records (not conviction) public record would have done so in light of these kinds of developments.

https://www.facebook.com/pages/City-of-Utica-NY-Police-Depar...

genwin• 14 years ago

In the US, businesses can legally reject employment based on an arrest record. In France it's illegal to post arrest records where there's no conviction; probably wanted posters are an exception though.

benjamincburns2• 14 years ago

I don't know if that's universally true in the US. Most labor laws such as these are set on a state (and sometimes local) level, so it's kind of a hodge-podge. For example, in Louisiana it's still legal to discriminate on the basis of sexuality, but not age, race, gender, or disability. But then in Orleans Parish (parishes are counties in Louisiana) it's not legal to discriminate on the basis of sexuality.

I'm not a lawyer though, and I have no idea what the federal law says regarding arrest vs conviction records. I do know that I've filled out numerous employment applications in many states that required me to disclose convictions of misdemeanor or worse crimes, but never any that have asked about an arrest record.

shardling• 14 years ago

Well, in the US as a whole, businesses can generally reject employment for any reason, no matter how petty. There's a small, finite list of reasons that are illegal -- race, sex, and the like -- but these have to be specifically enshrined in the law.

Local governments can add their own laws on top of this, of course. Discrimination against sexual orientation has become illegal in many places within the US.

engtech• 14 years ago

The craziest thing about looking through the warrants is the amount of charges that are either about property or drugs.

The media focuses so much on violence and sexual assault that I thought there would be more violent offenders in the mugshots.

PotatoEngineer• 14 years ago

If the media is focusing on it, it's rare. If the media stops running stories about violence (or runs fewer), then violence may be getting out of hand. If a single story about violence runs for a week, then it's rare, so violence is going down.

Media is weird.

mkolodny• 14 years ago

Doing the same thing for missing children could help a lot of parents find their kids.

rhizome3• 14 years ago

How well did putting pictures of missing children on milk cartons work?

maak• 14 years ago

Pintarrest

dsl• 14 years ago

Did anyone else notice from the screenshot that this one is kinda cute? http://pinterest.com/pin/74239093829161560/

zupreme2• 14 years ago

I wonder what the privacy-law impact of this will be. While all of us will probably agree with a system like this to help locate convicted felons, what about people who simply miss Jury Duty, forget about a court date, and so on.

In an era where every HR professional worth her salt Googles every applicant with a serious shot at the job, this could prevent some people from getting much-needed employment.

Worse yet, in instances where this causes people to be weeded out before even a phone interview, there is no effective way (outside of Google and the NSA) to track this type of behavior and the possible labor law violations that could result.

tptacek2• 14 years ago

To the extent that employers want to screen candidates who skip out on jury duty, it's hard to argue that there's a "privacy" issue in outing them. Skipping jury duty should be a matter of public record. You are obligated to serve as a juror when required. Willfully avoiding a jury summons is in fact a misdemeanor crime.

Don't skip jury duty.

The bigger problem with posting wanted signs on social networks is that they can't be expunged. This is a real issue, but very few people ever expunge their arrest records anyways.

The even bigger problem has nothing at all to do with social networks; it's that it's unfair (and probably unlawful) to screen employees by arrest record to begin with.

zupreme2• 14 years ago

That is, at it's core, my point. What happens if the case is thrown out? Even if removed from Social Network X, your fugitive status will live forever in the Wayback machine, on scraping sites, and so on.

readme• 14 years ago

Well, it's worth pointing out that this issue existed before pinterest. Tons of local PD's post mugshots on their websites.

Try googling the names of idiots you went to high school with. You're sure to find someone's mugshot.

qsddsq• 14 years ago

funny you can also see who re-pins your mugshot. if I were a criminal on there, time to drive up to their house and rape their kids

Local police post mugshots on Pinterest, leading to a 57% boost in arrests

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