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A mug shot or mugshot (an informal term for police photograph or booking photograph) is a photographic portrait of a person from the shoulders up, typically taken after a person is placed under arrest. The primary purpose of the mug shot is to allow law enforcement to have a photographic record of an arrested individual to allow for identification by victims, the public and investigators. However, in the United States, entrepreneurs have recently begun to monetize these public records via the mug shot publishing industry.
Photographing of criminals began in the 1840s only a few years after the invention of photography, but it was not until 1888 that French police officer Alphonse Bertillon standardized the process.
"A Cracksman," The Will O'the Wisp, 1 (2) Saturday 11 July 1846, p.3 In the United Kingdom, police in Liverpool and Birmingham were doing so by 1848. By 1853, the Philadelphia Police Department had a gallery where daguerreotypes of criminals were displayed.The Illustrated News, 15 March 1853, P. 186 and the New York Police Department had the same by 1857.
The Pinkerton National Detective Agency began using these on in the United States. By the 1870s the agency had amassed the largest collection of mug shots in the US.
The paired arrangement may have been inspired by the 1865 prison portraits taken by Alexander Gardner of accused conspirators in the Lincoln assassination trial, though Gardner's photographs were full-body portraits with only the heads turned for the profile shots.
After the defeat of the Paris Commune in 1871, the Prefecture of Police of Paris hired a photographer, Eugène Appert, to take portraits of convicted prisoners. In 1888, Alphonse Bertillon invented the modern mug shot featuring full face and profile views, standardizing the lighting and angles. This system was soon adopted throughout Europe, and in the United States and Russia.
The arrested person is sometimes required to hold a placard with name, date of birth, booking ID, weight, and other relevant information on it. With digital photography, the digital photograph is linked to a database record concerning the arrest. In some jurisdictions, mug shots are not legally required to be taken, mostly in the cases of high-profile individuals already known to a wider public.
According to the Handbook of Massachusetts Evidence (p. 617), "Because of the risk of prejudice to the defendant inherent in the admission of photographs of the 'mug shot' variety, judges and prosecutors are required to 'use reasonable means to avoid calling the jury's attention to the source of such photographs used to identify the defendant. Elsewhere, it cites a ruling in Commonwealth v. Martin that "admission of a defendant's mug shot is 'laden for characterizing the defendant as a careerist in crime.
Other states have similar rules. For example, Illinois specifies that all mug shots and booking information should be redacted.
Mug book also has a meaning in genealogy and history, referring to local biographical histories published in the US in the late 19th century. "Collected Biography", Ancestry Magazine Vol. 13 No. 4 (July/August 1995).Conzen, Michael P. (July 1974). "Local Migration Systems in Nineteenth-Century Iowa". Geographical Review. Vol. 64 No. 3. p. 341.
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