One North Carolina county takes down mugshots – and outrage ensues
A North Carolina county plans to remove around 400,000 mugshots from its public website, ending online access to booking photos collected over the past two decades.
Wake County, which includes the state capital of Raleigh, is expected to shut down its online mugshot portal, likely this month, the Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday. The photos will instead be available through two public kiosks in Raleigh, while residents can still search criminal court records through the state’s database.
The move is part of a broader shift in how states handle public access to mugshots. Since 2020, several states have tightened restrictions on releasing or posting booking photos, citing concerns that an arrest can leave a lasting digital record even when charges are later dismissed or expunged.
Utah, for example, generally bars law enforcement agencies from releasing mugshots before a conviction, while West Virginia has restricted some law enforcement posting of mugshots on social media. Rules vary widely across the country and can differ between states and individual police departments.
The debate centers on what happens to mugshots after a case is resolved. When a charge is expunged, government agencies generally must seal or remove the related public records, but that does not necessarily erase copies that were already posted online. Private mugshot websites, data aggregators and social media accounts can retain or republish the images.
In North Carolina, the Second Chance Act automatically expunges many criminal charges that do not result in a conviction. But those expungements have not consistently been reflected in Wake County’s mugshot database, meaning photos of people whose cases were cleared can remain publicly searchable.
“We don’t want to be putting inaccurate information out there,” Sam Pennica, director of Wake County’s Bureau of Forensic Services, told the WSJ.
Pennica said the county is trying to balance public-records requirements with concerns about making mugshots available online “for anybody and everybody to see.”
The photos can also spread far beyond government websites, where they have become a form of online entertainment. Social media pages repost mugshots alongside people’s names, ages, arrest dates and alleged charges, while commenters mock those pictured and, on some sites, rank photos as “funny,” “spooky” or “hot,” the WSJ reported.
Katheryn Zughbi, who runs a North Carolina Facebook page focused on crime news, said she will not make the 45-minute drive to Raleigh simply to obtain mugshots once the online portal disappears.
“I feel like it’s giving the criminals more rights than the people,” she told the WSJ.
Dennis Gaddy, who lobbied for the Second Chance Act before its passage in 2020, told the WSJ that restricting online access is a positive step because people will no longer be able to casually browse the photos.
“You have to work a little bit harder to get to the records,” he said.
Laura Webb, a project director at the nonprofit North Carolina Justice Center, also supports the change, arguing that leaving mugshots online can undermine the purpose of an expungement, the WSJ reported.
