NC needs to remove hurdles that keep former offenders from finding jobs, advocates say • NC Newsline

Philip Cooper, head of Operation Gateway, said people who have never been convicted are being punished as they find careers closed off to them even when charges have been dismissed. 

“If we want to be able to have a job with upward mobility so that we can take care of our families, so that we can own a home, so that we can go to our kids’ soccer games, so that we can go to community events and afford the opportunity to participate in the economic mainstream, then we have to see this issue with expunctions as an economic issue,” Cooper said. 

House Bill 778 would prevent law enforcement offices from sending mugshots to “publish-for-pay” tabloids or websites, and would prohibit those publications from charging people to remove their photographs. The bill would require publications to remove and destroy mugshots of people cleared of charges. 

It’s difficult to reconcile the concept of ‘innocent until proven guilty’ with the gas station publications and “click-bait websites” that display mugshots no matter the charges, said Rep. Terry Brown, a Mecklenburg Democrat. It’s even more difficult when websites tell people to pay if they want their mugshot removed. 

“The publication of these mugshots is for no other reason than to dehumanize and exploit people to make a spectacle, and to charge a fee to remove them from the websites,” he said. 

Mugshots depict people at their worst moments, said Micah Hayes of Operation Gateway. An arrest doesn’t make a person a criminal, but “the mugshot itself automatically criminalizes a person.” 

Hayes said a Google search will produce information about his community involvement. It will also bring up an image of his bruised and bloodied face in his mugshot. 

“I don’t think that this just affects me,” he said. It also affects his family “financially, emotionally, and generationally,” Hayes said.