Humor writers deserve our pity. Each day, they have to come up with some new hook that can make people laugh, or else they’ll be out on the street with no job at all. Mugshot websites make the life of a writer a little easier, as these sites allow computer users to copy photographs for personal use. With just a few clicks of the mouse, a writer’s work for the day is done. Showing up on a site like this could mean disaster, however, as the sites often publish the names of people who are arrested, and it’s easy enough for other writers to steal photos from these humor sites and meet their own deadlines with the same photo. In time, your photo could spread all across the Internet, just because a few writers want to make people laugh.
Avoiding an arrest is the best way to ensure that you’re not the brunt of these kinds of jokes, but if you are arrested, there are a few things you can do to make sure your photo just isn’t funny enough to share.
1. Don’t Smile.
People who are arrested often have very little to smile about, and according to an article produced by NPR, some sheriffs actually don’t allow people to smile in their mugshots. Those who do could face additional time in jail, or they could be fined. However, some people feel that smiling is an excellent way to protest their arrest, and they show off their pearly whites as the camera flashes. Unfortunately, smiling like this in a mugshot is just inappropriate, and some people find these photos just hilarious. As a result, websites have pulled together a variety of catalogs of people grinning. (One choice example comes from the Orlando Sentinel, which also published the names of people photographed, along with the crimes they were accused of.)
2. Keep Your Emotions in Check.
Getting arrested is an emotional experience, and it’s not unusual for people to wear their emotions all over their faces during their mugshots. People may cry, rage at the camera or otherwise misbehave while they’re photographed. This might allow people to blow off a little steam during a stressful situation, but again, it’s just not a good idea. People who are emotional in their photographs are often targets of humor sites, and the writers of these sites love to publish collections of people looking distressed. For example, SlightlyWarped.com has published a collection of crying-people mugshots, under the heading, “If you can’t do the time, don’t do the crime ‘ya [sic] crybabies!” It’s worth mentioning that mugshots are records of arrests, not convictions, so it’s possible that the people shown here aren’t guilty. But the site chooses to overlook that fact in order to poke reputation-wrecking fun.
3. Face Forward.
In order to use a mugshot in a facial-recognition software program, photographers need an image that shows all of a person’s facial features in clear focus. This means that people must face forward and look at the camera. Everybody knows this on some level, but even so, there are some people who choose to rebel by refusing to look up or hold their heads up. Police officers will go to great lengths to get the photos they need, and this means they’ll hold people upright in order to snap the shot. Photos like this are, again, inadvertently funny and they show up on blogs over and over again. It’s best to pull yourself together and cooperate, so you won’t be in one of these photos.
4. Dress Appropriately.
When you’re heading out for a night on the town and you have even the slightest suspicion that you might get arrested, it’s important to dress for the occasion. Loud, lewd or just strange clothing could get you placed in blogs like this one from Oddee.com, which compiles a list of mugshots with people in strangely inappropriate tee shirts.
5. Hire an Expert.
If you are arrested and you know that your photo isn’t as professional as it could be, it’s best to hire a mugshot removal expert as quickly as possible. They can help you to delete photos as soon as they appear, so they won’t be pulled off mugshot sites and onto humor sites. In some cases, they can pull down photos instantly.
