How to humiliate and shame: a reporter's guide to the power of the mugshot

Abstract

I was struck both by how much the style of the photographs changed over 25 years with a semi-formal portrait style becomes austere and functional. Hidden meanings and implications of guilt Example One This is a Sun newspaper article featuring a picture of Robert Murat, once a suspect in the Madeline McCann case. ii At its simplest, it is a photograph of a person. We can immediately recognise that it is a police photograph, or as they are more colloquially known, a mugshot, as key institutional signs are there: the deadpan expression of the subject, a vertical measurement stick for showing height, the neutral background and, in this case, a watermark that tells us the picture belongs to the Portuguese police.

Representing teachers as criminals in the news: a multimodal critical discourse analysis of the Atlanta schools’ “Cheating Scandal”

“…In fact, mugshots in the USA are so notorious and readily available that UK tabloids frequently use them "as a free freak show so they can jeer at the spectacle" (Lashmar 2014, 26). Lashmar also notes that mugshots are increasingly used in disturbing ways and that this process separates society rather than bringing it together inciting "schadenfreude, the thrill, the derision and the fear when the subject is pictured" (Lashmar 2014.). This 24-hour news coverage of the "Cheating Scandal" events pictured here creates "a modern version of the medieval spectacle" described in Foucault's Discipline & Punish.…”

“…According to Foucault, the punishment has to be seen to be effective, and thus the mugshot, which "was established as a means of spectacle, shame and punishment" (Lashmar 2014, 21) works efficiently to do this. In his detailed analysis of mugshots as semiotic resources, Lashmar (2014) found that the format varies little and, according to Tagg, "subjects are isolated in a shallow contained space; turned full face and subjected to an unreturnable gaze; illuminated, focused, measured, numbered and named; forced to yield to the minutest scrutiny of gestures and features" (1988,64). In fact, mugshots in the USA are so notorious and readily available that UK tabloids frequently use them "as a free freak show so they can jeer at the spectacle" (Lashmar 2014, 26).…”

Putting a Face on It

“…On the contrary, the ID-like photo resembles a so-called "kinder egg", providing one solution to three different problems. It identifies a perpetrator, it symbolically contains him/her in a visual form that spells deviancy and, as Lashmar (2014) points out, it humiliates the deviant other in a way that is calming and satisfactory to the public.…”

Mastering the Mug Shot

“…Such sites have raised concerns about privacy, public records and the way the camera "captures" subjects beyond their embodied arrest (Mulcahy 2015;Norris 2013;Rostron 2013). Traditional newspapers regularly include mug shots in crime coverage and some even post mug shots in online galleries (Lashmar 2014;Batchelder 2014). Finally, the expressions of those depicted in mug shots might also hold fascination for evolutionary reasons, as viewers look for cues in the faces of these debased "others" charged with crimes (cf.…”