Earlier quoted context omitted.
“Disappear” doesn’t necessarily mean “murder and hide the body”. It can also cover harassing people and completely disrupting their lives by throwing them in jail for a while for no particularly good reason and then not telling anyone until you release them (possibly having beaten or raped them in the meanwhile, and extracted promises of future regime-approved behavior). Requiring that the police make public who they…
Thanks for that, I understand the argument a little more. If reducing undue harassment and disruption is the reason for publishing mugshots, and it turns out that in practice the mugshots are actually being used by others to harass and disrupt (potentially innocent) people's lives, then maybe it's worth reviewing the practice? Where I'm from most minor criminal convictions on a persons the record are essentially wipe…
> Another thing, what happens to the people who don't have a lawyer or whose friends and family don't have the resources to take on the police department in the event that the police detain and abuse them? Who would they be able to call in that situation to seek justice if the same police who committed the crime are receiving the call?
In theory, assuming the police don’t entirely disappear someone, they will eventually be released or have to be tried in court. In either case they would then be in a position to report local police misconduct to either a regional authority like a county sheriff, or to the FBI, which has a general mandate to investigate abuses of people’s rights.
In practice, the rule of law can be thin on the ground outside of metropolitan areas. Police departments are small and tight-knit, judges are extremely friendly with the police, juries are extremely likely to rubber-stamp whatever charges local police want to happen, and police and prosecution are likely to “forget” about a wide variety of standards and public disclosure requirements.