Crime & Mugshot Policy

There are times when we have to report on crime. We would be doing our readers a disservice if we ignored all instances of crime in the Cincinnati Metro. We don’t want our front page to be paved with arrests and stories of police action, but bad things do happen, and we need to talk about it.

But how we talk about crime not only affects how Cincinnati residents see their community, it also affects the lives of those involved. We need to preserve the humanity of everyone involved in crime – the victims, the suspects, even those convicted of crime. News organizations are not part of the criminal justice system, so we need to be careful not to play judge and jury.

To that end, we have a few guidelines we follow when we report on crime:

First, we only use police booking photos – mug shots – in two circumstances: If the suspect is still at large and considered dangerous, or if they have been convicted of a crime such as sexual assault and it is believed there may be more victims who would come forward if they were aware.

Second, we don’t write stories about mental health crises if they are victimless. So, a death by suicide where no one else was harmed, or police responding to a mental health crisis where no one was hurt or arrested. There’s another conversation to be had about whether our police forces should be the ones tasked with responding to mental health issues, but making these dark moments public does nothing to move that conversation forward.