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Online, mug shots are forever – some states want to change that

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Re: Online, mug shots are forever – some states want to change that

#51

Post by cortesoft »

whatshisface wrote: post #38
errantspark wrote: post #5

I wonder in the discussions surrounding these sorts of things (Right to be Forgotten, etc) if the issue isn't that there should be a right to be forgotten but rather that culturally we should be far far more tolerant of people fucking up. It feels like the perception of how much the average member of society transgresses its rules is totally out of sync with reality, though this may be by design to create space for e…

You can change the law, but there's no plausible path towards making people less judgemental. It's like saying, "speed limits are misguided, what we really need is a culture of safe driving."

There are plausible paths to changing behavior and morality. Prohibition was a failure, but we have had great success reducing the number of nicotine users over the years through public health campaigns.

Re: Online, mug shots are forever – some states want to change that

#52

Post by laurent92 »

ksdale wrote: post #43
whatshisface wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can change the law, but there's no plausible path towards making people less judgemental. It's like saying, "speed limits are misguided, what we really need is a culture of safe driving."

I think something like gay rights provides a great example of hundreds of millions of people becoming drastically less judgmental over just a few decades. Of course it involves changes in the law as well, but massive cultural shifts do happen!

We shouldn’t describe the past as extremely one thing. Because when I discovered there was a gay street and plenty of gay clubs in Berlin up to 1934, I started to entirely distrust a lot of things I had been taught about the past. The wedge got driven even further when I learnt Archimedes didn’t say Eureka, Galileo didn’t say “E pur se mueve!” to the pope (so… was he ever imprisoned? did Christians even question the round earth?) and the ILO 1930 treaty against slavery included all humans… except men. Until 1957. Which quite relativizes the narrative about women’s suffrage.

It’s dangerous to transform History into storytelling for one cause, because it makes people distrust it profoundly.

Re: Online, mug shots are forever – some states want to change that

#53

Post by jawzz »

1_person wrote: post #42
admax88q wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Plus, if that's an issue we want to solve, then make laws that actually target discrimination because of arrest record. Do you honestly think such laws would be effective?

Considering that the status quo is currently that literally asking the individual and querying the source of truth to confirm the history of an individual directly for the purpose of discrimination are ubiquitous practices... yes, I think such laws would be very effective in reducing discrimination on the basis of criminal and judicial history. If we have not even said that it is wrong, then it's going to happen. Say…

These laws exist. You’re not allowed to discriminate based on criminal or arrest record unless it’s relevant to the job (e.g. someone applying to be a delivery driver with 3 DUIs).

The problem is that between two equally qualified candidates, if one has a record and the other is clean, it can be pretty easy to justify just throwing the first one out. And pretty hard to prove that that’s why you were rejected.

Re: Online, mug shots are forever – some states want to change that

#54

Post by thatcat »

_jal wrote: post #29
moshmosh wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the idea is that making charges & arrests public keeps the system transparent, and makes it harder for the government to disappear people or otherwise do crazy despotic stuff. In practice I'm not convinced it was net-beneficial before the Internet, and I'm almost certain it's not in an Internet-equipped world.

This is the reason. The US justice system is meant to operate in the open, to serve the interests of the public who finances it. Same reason it is generally very difficult to litigate under seal. Observations about the difference between theory and practice omitted.

The justice system forbids individuals recording the judge but records and could publish every interaction you have with them. That is not operating in a system of openness and transparency.

Re: Online, mug shots are forever – some states want to change that

#55

Post by ksdale »

laurent92 wrote: post #52
ksdale wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think something like gay rights provides a great example of hundreds of millions of people becoming drastically less judgmental over just a few decades. Of course it involves changes in the law as well, but massive cultural shifts do happen!

We shouldn’t describe the past as extremely one thing. Because when I discovered there was a gay street and plenty of gay clubs in Berlin up to 1934, I started to entirely distrust a lot of things I had been taught about the past. The wedge got driven even further when I learnt Archimedes didn’t say Eureka, Galileo didn’t say “E pur se mueve!” to the pope (so… was he ever imprisoned? did Christians even question the…

Yeah for sure, that's not to say it was always a certain way or that it's an inevitable march towards anything, just that massive shifts in culture do happen (and I think as your comment illustrates, cultures changes much faster than we think!).

We tend to think it's easier to change the law than to change how people feel, and that's not always true.

Re: Online, mug shots are forever – some states want to change that

#56

Post by agogdog »

dfxm12 wrote: post #4

What are the forces at play here? People don't want to be embarrassed by their mugshot vs people don't want to be discriminated against because of a mugshot vs the transparency of who cops are arresting and why. I don't know if laws should care about someone being embarrassed. I'm kind of surprised about this anti-transparency rhetoric coming someone who started a Libertarian think tank (but maybe I shouldn't be). I…

You are vastly underestimating how judgemental people are. I know someone with a mugshot up for a non-violent drug use offense and she still struggles with it when background checks come up over a decade later.

I agree that we need to be able to check this stuff to hold police accountable, but there's got to be a better way that doesn't involve public shaming.

Re: Online, mug shots are forever – some states want to change that

#57

Post by jrockway »

whatshisface wrote: post #38
errantspark wrote: post #5

I wonder in the discussions surrounding these sorts of things (Right to be Forgotten, etc) if the issue isn't that there should be a right to be forgotten but rather that culturally we should be far far more tolerant of people fucking up. It feels like the perception of how much the average member of society transgresses its rules is totally out of sync with reality, though this may be by design to create space for e…

You can change the law, but there's no plausible path towards making people less judgemental. It's like saying, "speed limits are misguided, what we really need is a culture of safe driving."

I think the speed limit thing is actually something that traffic engineers think about. You can design roads such that people drive a certain speed. Think about how uncomfortable you'd be driving down a narrow windy road at 60mph, versus the same speed on a multi-lane divided highway. If you want people to drive 20mph, make it hard to navigate at 30mph.

There is probably an art to this, and it's not as easy in practice as the popular books I've read on it claim. My neighborhood in Brooklyn is part of the "neighborhood slow zones" project. That means they put a speed bump midway down the street, which is a popular way to bypass some traffic lights on the way to the BQE. People drive 90 miles an hour right up until the speed bump, slam on the brakes, and then accelerate back up to maximum cruising speed. It doesn't really serve much purpose. (Meanwhile, if you got rid of the curb, and people's lawn furniture / outdoor dining started impinging on available space, it would be impossible to drive more than 5mph. But, there's no political will to block the street like that -- what if a fire truck got stuck and people died in a fire! So it will never ever happen.)

But, like tolerance, it's something we can work on if we choose to.

Re: Online, mug shots are forever – some states want to change that

#58

Post by BitwiseFool »

1_person wrote: post #48
BitwiseFool wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The way I see it, you can either pass a law "banning the pixels" or try to change human nature. Which will be easier and which one will address the issue sooner?

Either way you're ignoring human nature. The other human nature is the nature of power to corrupt, ignored in reducing the transparency of the judicial and executive processes. I can't think of a single historical or contemporary example of government secrecy which has produced morally consistent outcomes. I do not think such things can exist without eventually corrupting the process they serve. As I said below in an…

You can still have this information be publicly available without it being easily accessible on the internet. That's the key. I think we need to return to a system where this information is accessible on request, but not something that's easy to find online.

Re: Online, mug shots are forever – some states want to change that

#59

Post by BitwiseFool »

swiley wrote: post #49
aspaceman wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My local police department posts mugshots on their Twitter, sends copies to the local newspaper, and types up a detailed report for the local radio station for _every_ _single_ _interaction_. "John Doe was pulled over by X police Saturday afternoon for a speeding violation. Jane Y was ..." And every Sunday, the local station plays these. So you know every single person who was pulled over. The vehicle they drive. Etc…

It will end up on the feed the court publishes, so it's not like it isn't public information. The police could chill out though and not make a bad situation worse.

There's a difference between the information simply being "public" and a social media account blasting out people's mugshots on Twitter.

Re: Online, mug shots are forever – some states want to change that

#60

Post by akudha »

whatshisface wrote: post #38
errantspark wrote: post #5

I wonder in the discussions surrounding these sorts of things (Right to be Forgotten, etc) if the issue isn't that there should be a right to be forgotten but rather that culturally we should be far far more tolerant of people fucking up. It feels like the perception of how much the average member of society transgresses its rules is totally out of sync with reality, though this may be by design to create space for e…

You can change the law, but there's no plausible path towards making people less judgemental. It's like saying, "speed limits are misguided, what we really need is a culture of safe driving."

It is both. Speed limits work because majority of the people respect them. Cops can’t control the entire population, if majority choose to misbehave. This is what it feels like online. People seem to relish in posting other’s misfortune, mistakes etc with little consequences. They do things online that they wouldn’t dare to do in real life.

If the attitude doesn’t change, no amount of laws would help

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