Why The Sacramento Bee will no longer publish police ‘mugshots,’ with limited exceptions

The Sacramento Bee announced Wednesday it will limit the publication of police booking photos, surveillance photos and videos of alleged crimes, and composite sketches of suspects provided by law enforcement agencies.

Publishing these photographs and videos disproportionately harms people of color and those with mental illness, while also perpetuating stereotypes about who commits crime in our community.

The policy is effective immediately and will be applied moving forward.

”The Bee has taken several recent steps to work against long-standing stereotypes. We have largely banned the use of the word “looting” – a term rooted in racism – and have sought to elevate the voices of emerging writers from communities we have long underserved through our Community Voices project,” said Bee President and Editor Lauren Gustus. “And building trust takes time. Our intention with this policy change is to take another step forward.”

The Bee and most other mainstream media outlets have routinely published police booking photos, commonly referred to as “mugshots,” for decades. The photos are typically provided by law enforcement agencies that arrest or charge suspects.

Their publication can have a permanent damaging effect on individuals and communities.

For example, it’s not always reported when a suspect arrested on suspicion of a crime is later released, acquitted by a jury or pleads guilty to a charge of lesser severity. Yet the mugshot of that person in police custody remains.

Other news organizations have taken similar steps in recent months.

The Houston Chronicle announced in January that it would stop publishing “mugshot slideshows” of suspects who had been arrested but not convicted. The nonprofit New Haven Independent in Connecticut avoids publishing most images of people who are arrested.

And the San Francisco Police Department earlier this month announced it will no longer release mugshots, unless the public is in imminent danger.

“This policy emerges from compelling research suggesting that the widespread publication of police booking photos in the news and on social media creates an illusory correlation for viewers that fosters racial bias and vastly overstates the propensity of Black and brown men to engage in criminal behavior,” Police Chief William Scott said in a statement.

The Bee’s policy includes limited exceptions, such as booking photos of public figures; photos of suspected serial killers; cases in which there is an immediate and widespread threat to public safety; and those suspected of hate crimes.

The Bee will continue to publish video footage of body-worn and other camera footage of police officer use of force. Publishing these videos is one way to hold those in positions of power accountable. These videos can have a damaging emotional and psychological effect on victims of police violence and our communities, and we will continue to include warning labels on those videos.

The change is in part attributable to a story The Bee published on its website July 3. The story included surveillance photographs of people suspected of vandalizing stores in downtown Sacramento following a night of protests against police brutality.

Members of the community asked that the story – and the photographs – be removed from our website the next day and we did so. We apologize for the harm that publishing those photos may have caused.

This story was originally published July 9, 2020 at 2:08 PM.