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Tampa Mug Shot Site Is Like an Involuntary Facebook for the Accused

by Peter Mychalcewycz on April 10, 2009 at 04:12 PM



If you plan on visiting the Tampa Bay area, you may want to try harder than usual not to be arrested. A new mug shot Web site is putting perps front and center, and we're not just talking photos.

Tampa Bay Mug Shots is a new site devoted to criminal activity in the Florida counties of Pinellas, Hillsborough, and Pasco. The main feature of the site is a scrollable line of mug shots at the top of the window (introduced with the blunt headline "meet people who were arrested in the last 24 hours..."). However, if you click a mug shot, you can get personal information for the perpetrator, like height, weight, age, gender, eye, and hair color. You can see what the individual has been charged with, as well as when and where the arrest occurred. It's like Facebook for crime, except you have no control over your profile.

One of the coolest features of the site is its statistical breakdowns of physical attributes for all offenders. For example, when we last looked at the site, we saw that people weighing between 141 and 160 pounds had been arrested more than any other weight range. Maybe accused criminals are more apt to diet, because the average U.S. weight is somewhere around 180 pounds. The site is filled with these sorts of trivial tidbits, as well as local law enforcement news and links to sheriff Web sites.


Mug shots are a matter of public record, so, technically, there is nothing wrong with posting the information on the site. However, we feel that the inclusion of such specifically personal information combined with the 'shiny' feel of the site lends itself more to entertainment than to research. Let's not even get into the personal privacy ethics involved here. Though the people represented in the mug shots are presumed innocent until proven guilty, we think that the way they are being paraded around implies a different presumption. [From: Tampa Bay Mug Shots Via: Subtraction.com]

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Tags: crime, crime and punishment, CrimeAndPunishment, criminals, funny, mug shot, MugShot, police, privacy, tampa bay, TampaBay, top

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