South Carolinians need real legal protections to prevent falling victim to the mugshots.
If you’ve ever been arrested and booked into custody for a serious crime, the police or sheriff’s department may decide to have a picture taken of you.
While the mere fact of being arrested may cause a person’s image to be plastered all over the Internet, a person can’t usually do much to remove this image. For example, the arrest could lead to police records, and the charge may be included in a
A mug shot that appeared on the Internet can help keep you out of work and out of trouble; but, it can also keep you out of work and out of trouble. The latter case can leave you unemployed for months or years.
In addition to exposing people to online criminal records and other personal details, online mugshots may hurt romantic relationships in ways that are rarely spoken of.
South Carolina Mugshot Removal Law
The South Carolina legislature decided on a law to be passed, later that year, which gave the legislature the power to overrule any referendum held in the state.
S.C. Code Section 17-1:60 says:
“People who are arrested might be given their personal information such as their driver’s license number. The police are generally authorized to record your personal information when you are convicted of certain crimes such as homicide, sexual abuse of a minor,
(A) For purposes of this section, if a person or entity whose main business is to publish the arrest and booking records of individuals who are arrested and booked in South Carolina publishes those records on the person’s or entity’s website, that person or entity is deemed to be transacting business in South Carolina.
(B) It is unlawful for a person or entity to obtain or attempt to obtain the arrest and booking records of a person who is arrested and detained within the boundaries of South Carolina if the individual or entity knows about the arrest and detention.
(1) people who use the booking records to decide whether someone is worthy of being a police officer will consider other information that might make someone unfit, including race, sex and other demographic information.
To eliminate or amend criminal records it will need to be paid a fee, even if there were no criminal charges A: I would probably just start writing from the new point forward and go backwards to finish
(C) If a publisher is aware that South Carolina residents are required to provide biographical information to other websites, the publisher may not require a fee to comply with the statute.“
Penalties For Violating The South Carolina Law?
Before the law went into effect, websites like mughots.com and tabloids like Carolina Mugshots could charge you money to take down photos from mugshots even if the court already determined you were not guilty of the alleged crime committed by the person pictured.
When you violate copyright on a website in South Carolina, you can now get a ticket for it, punishable by up to 60 days in jail and a $1000 fine. At first, the online extorter who violated S.C. Code Section 17-1:60 would only
If you are arrested in South Carolina or have a mugshot taken in South Carolina, you should not give information to the media or to anyone else seeking a picture or record that might lead to publicizing it. The law makes it illegal for you to give out information that may lead to publicizing arrest and booking records or mug shots that are required to be maintained by the law enforcement agency that arrested you and keep it on file for 5 years. It is illegal for you or your employer to charge a
Can I sue mugshot websites?
A bill enacted in South Carolina, requiring websites that use extortion photos to remove photos of the accused individual within 30 days and banning these publications from charging fees for removing the pictures if they are in fact related to a published photograph of a specific individual, was signed into law in early June.
The process for removing your information from the White Pages of The Web goes through three steps. First, you should write the website a personal letter telling them that you have decided to remove your information from The Web. Be polite and specific. Second, ask to see the appropriate form in which you submit, and ask your browser to print it. Third, you must fill out and mail the form and send the proof of postage to
All of this information is public information on mugshots.com and CarolinaMugshots.com. If you see it, you can sue if you believe that there is some law that protects you from this public information.
If we do not recognize that the lawmakers’ heart is in the right place, their intentions may not be very effective.
Mugshots.com and the Carolina Public Safety Department are not the same. Even if the former website honors the latter entity’s requests to have your arrest information released, the department itself is not obligated to return that information, which means that someone’s arrest record is not available for anyone requesting it. The Carolina Public Safety Department does in fact have a website that will allow
To make sure your charges have been dismissed, the court or magistrate has to sign a formal letter or court order stating that they have been dismissed. In some cases, this is done by simply signing a piece of paper. In other cases, this formal record from the court exists, and you must
Or you lose your right to challenge the court record if the jury found that you were not guilty.
You need to show the clerk’s office what court order to recognize the crime and order that the police charges be erased from your record. The most common ways to obtain this result are to show that the arrest was in error since you were arrested twice for the same crime, or to show that you have been released from jail or prison. After that, you should get the court’s approval to erase the record from the police
Many of the people who have your information on the web can’t physically retrieve your order of expungement to confirm that it was granted, so they aren’t obligated to take your mugshot down.
What are the problems with the South Carolina mugshot law?
Then there are a couple of other reasons why the current process is flawed. Law in South Carolina prevents:
If you’re guilty of a crime, it won’t make any difference if the conviction has since been overturned or expunged or not. Nor will it help if the appellate court that overturned the conviction had found that it was the prosecutor who committed wrongdoing rather than you. Even if you’re innocent, it won’t help unless you can afford a private attorney and
In South Carolina, the police can charge you with a crime even if you are not breaking the law by posting a mugshot to the internet or to a message board, say legal experts and advocates, and even if in doing so you aren’t violating anything. To paraphrase what the author
This story was mentioned in passing because the author also included 80 other law enforcement organizations that do not take advantage of the laws we’ve mentioned in our story. Also, not every organization that engages in using mug shots breaks the law.
The simple fact is, South Carolina’s mugshot removal isn’t easy to do by yourself.
Try to make a site on the web to let people know more about you to help to improve your chances of having a mugshot appear for your name on the top of a search page. It will require a site development and online marketing expertise. Google changed its algorithms so your mugshot will not automatically appear on the first page of search results, but they don’t make any guarantees. They are not obligated to provide those guarantees. A site doesn’t always appear at the top of Google
Paypal payments will be terminated for those who are charged for mugshot sites. But mugshots will still be posted.
Need help removing your mugshot?
We, at We Can Help You Remove Criminal Mugshots for a Reasonable Fee, advise that you contact a professional, licensed mugshot removal company in South Carolina. When calling a South Carolina mugshot removal company, please do not say the first thing that comes to your mind. Always call a South Carolina mugshot removal company that specifically handles mugshots. These
Alex Adekola is a proven thought leader in the reputation management industry who has targeted mugshot publishers since 2012. He is the longest-serving reputation and crisis management strategist and has written extensively on crisis management. He is the creator and director of strategy at Incept Technologies.