Lindsay Lohan is back in jail and yet another mug shot has been released. Wikipedia describes the purpose of a mug shot as: The purpose of the mug shot is to allow law enforcement to have a photographic record of the arrested individual to allow for identification by victims and investigators.
I realize it’s a formality that all arrestees must endure, but is there really a practical, useful benefit to making her pose for a new mug shot?
I’d be more curious as to why it’s publicly released…somebody’s getting paid somehow I’m sure.
But…it keeps a record of a person’s change in appearance across the span of their criminal career. That’s gotta be worth something.
her specifically or arrestees in general?
It’s probably a good idea to have a new mugshot each time your arrested. I’d expect career criminals to change their look from time to time, either purposefully or just due to aging. Also, it’s hard for a victim to ID someone from a picture that’s three years old. Rather then let the cop decide who does or does not get a new picture, just have them all get one.
Specifically Lindsey Lohan? Her career doesn’t exempt her from the law, if she get’s arrested, she get’s treated like everyone else.
It’s a public record.
So how does one go about getting a copy? Can I get my own mugshot? (don’t ask :p)
So there’s a legal obligation established to have said mugshots plastered all over tabloid magazine front covers?
Like I said, albeit poorly, somebody’s getting paid somehow. Public record, and published, that’s two different things. Some poor fool probably doesn’t have the job of rifling through police records looking for someone famous. More likely, some cop knows a guy at a magazine, etc. And that’s what I was talking about.
If Lindsey Lohan was arrested quietly in a small town in middle Wisconsin and no one saw it happen and it was on the tabloids the next day, yeah, someone at the police station might have made a few calls. But when a celebrity gets arrested in broad day light or hauled out of a court room to the police station, no one needs to call anyone, we all saw it happen. All the tabloids have to do is walk into the station and ask for the mugshots. I believe that’s part of the Freedom Of Information Act. That’s not to say that the magazines and the police department don’t have a few connections or that there isn’t some money moving around, but there’s nothing illegal happening. You can go into a police station and ask for anyone’s mugshots.
BTW, here’s a whole lotta famous mugs
No, but there is certainly a legal obligation to give said mugshots to anyone who asks for them.
I’m not sure if it’s real or if you’re being deliberately dense, but what could possibly make you think that something being public record means that “there’s a legal obligation established to have said mugshots plastered all over tabloid magazine front covers”?
My guess is that you have more of an issue with tabloid magazines and paparazzi (which is fine) then with this specific issue.
The chick on the bottom right is a fucking hottie!
The ‘legal obligation’ of a public record is that they are obligated to give a copy to any member of the public who asks. (They can charge a reasonable copying cost.)
Many jail facilities now post online the list of everyone arrested that day, charged in court, or currently held in the county jail. (Here’s the one for my local Hennepin County.) And many of them also post the mug shot of the person arrested.
So while they could be paying off some cop, that is more likely just for the tip – the actual mug shot is probably easily available online.
P.S. Lots of such stuff is available online. Just this week, I watched the highway patrol dash camera video of the Campaign Manager for the Republican candidate for Mn Governor getting arrested for drunk driving (2-1/2 times the legal limit, and it really shows when they ask him to do some field sobriety tests.) This guy is a Legislator running for re-election himself. And the Governor candidate has 2 previous DWI convictions (years ago) and last year tried to weaken the DWI laws. Earlier this year the Governor candidate’s teen-age son was cited for underage drinking, while driving a campaign car. Seems to run in the family!)
It’s a public record of her lips getting slightly bigger every time she gets booked.
You only notice them because they’re famous. Even local paper websites may carry mugshots of everyday people who commit crimes - for instance, the Chicago Sun-Times runs a Mug Shots in the News link and updates it daily with new mugshots of non-famous local people charged with crimes.
No it was more of a sarcastic statement. I know it’s not required to put them all over the magazine covers. I thought that would be obvious, but I guess I didn’t word it right.
But yes, I do have a problem with the whorish manner of the “gossip media” and all its various outlets…including tabloid magazines.
This is true in most cases, and any reporter worth a damn knows how to get mugshots from their local court system if they aren’t online. Also, many jurisdictions post arrests and arraignments online as well. A reporter covering the crime beat is very much attuned to the activity on those sites. At the paper where I work, we get faxes of arrest reports from all of the local agencies and all of the surrounding counties.
In Lohan’s case, it wasn’t a middle of the night arrest – she was sent to jail from a courtroom packed with press. Not sure why a tip would have been necessary to deduce that Lohan was in the pokey.
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And that was only after she publicly announced she failed a court ordered drug/alcohol test.
Wow…
We really need some lessons on how to insert quotations into a reply. I didn’t say that!
Yeah, I realized that after it was too late to edit it. That’s what happens if you try to un-nest the quotes and miss the first part.
I’ll bet they don’t update it with a feature on “these people were found not guilty.” It must be terrible to be one of the very few people who were victims of mistaken identity, a malicious frame job, or simple error on the part of the police, and now their picture is on the internet forever. I’ve never been arrested, but I have been accused of something I didn’t do, and let me tell you, it isn’t pleasant.
