

In the US in the early 21st century an online industry developed around the publication and removal of mug shots from internet websites. Main article: Mug shot publishing industry With digital photography, the digital photograph is linked to a database record concerning the arrest. The arrested person is sometimes required to hold a placard with name, date of birth, booking ID, weight, and other relevant information on it. This system was soon adopted throughout Europe, and in the United States and Russia.
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In 1888, Alphonse Bertillon invented the modern mug shot featuring full face and profile views, standardizing the lighting and angles. 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.Īfter 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. By the 1870s the agency had amassed the largest collection of mug shots in the US. The Pinkerton National Detective Agency began using these on wanted posters in the United States. By 1857, the New York City Police Department had a gallery where daguerreotypes of criminals were displayed. In Liverpool and Birmingham they were doing so by 1848. In the United Kingdom, police in London were photographing criminals by 1846. The earliest photos of prisoners taken for use by law enforcement may have been taken in Belgium in 18. In high-profile cases, mug shots may also be published in the mass media. Mug shots may be compiled into a mug book in order to determine the identity of a criminal.


The background is usually plain to avoid distraction from the head. Self-portrait mug shot of Alphonse Bertillon, who developed and standardized this type of photograph, 22 August 1900Ī typical mug shot is two-part, with one side-view photo, and one front-view. Mug shot can more loosely mean any small picture of a face used for any reason. "Mug" is an English slang term for " face", dating from the 18th century.

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. However, in the United States, entrepreneurs have recently begun to monetize these public records via the mug shot publishing industry. The original purpose of the mug shot was to allow law enforcement to have a photographic record of an arrested individual to allow for identification by victims, the public and investigators. Police mugshot of Patty Hearst taken at the San Mateo County Jail, September 18, 1975Ī 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 arrested.
