Democracy Has Its Costs, Including Your Mug Shot

A federal appeals court has ruled that the public has no right to see arrestees’ mug shots, reversing a ruling that has been in place for 20 years. The case pits the individual’s interest in privacy against the public’s interest in getting all the information it can about an arrest, which is the quintessential public government act. My heart says the court got it right. But my head says that in a functioning democracy, government actions need to be open to scrutiny, even at the cost of permanent embarrassment to some of the government’s targets.

The case was decided by all the members of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit, sitting to reconsider their own precedent. In 1996, the court interpreted the Freedom of Information Act to require disclosure of booking photos. The ruling applied to all federal arrests in Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky and Tennessee, the court’s jurisdiction. Because FOIA is a law that affects the federal government only, the court’s ruling didn’t apply to local or state police.