Upstanding citizens Michael Quinn and Carole Atkins maintain a website in Bradenton Florida to ensure that if you get arrested in their neck of the woods, Manatee County and environs, the whole world will have access to your mugshot, and the details of your crime. Or alleged crime, since the accounts are posted in advance of court hearings, guilty verdicts, or even a minor’s turning 18. Legal? D’ya think?

Townships and counties around America are setting up online databases where residents can acquaint themselves with the sexual offenders living in their neighborhoods. Regardless what you think of the merits of that sort of neighborhood watch, isn’t it quite another thing to broadcast the pictures of ordinary people who’ve run afoul of the law?

The Manatee County collection represents a repository of sad persons whose lives are going to be forever bound with citations, fees and parole officers. Just knowing that their likenesses are being broadcast far and wide, what is their sense of their own prospects for being offered a job or credit, or any kind of fresh start? The majority of these cases site confessions to detectives, and end reassuring the reader that the arrestee is presently in jail unable to post bond.

Working against the inevitable recidivists is the unfortunate talent of the Bradenton Police Department photographer. There’s an irresistible quality to the pictures themselves, which are not the usual dull mugshots, but are curiously real emotive portraits.

Then there’s the absolute pathos of the crime descriptions themselves. Manatee County is determined to hound even the lowest of evildoers who siphon gas, even from an outboard engine boat fuel tank.

Here are some sample crimes:

Angry Boys, 12 and 14, Arrested for Breaking Car Windows and Stealing Golf Clubs

Young Man Threatens Sister with Fire Poker, BB Gun, Throws CDs at Mom

Man Argues with Other Man Over Baseball Teams While Playing Golf

Bradenton Police Arrest Man for Burglary After He Entered Family Residence Where He’s Not Welcome

Woman Found Hiding in Closet in South Manatee County
(charged with breaking into an Unoccupied Dwelling)

Man Cuts Friend’s Hand in Argument Over Beer

Man Rented Out Home He Didn’t Own

Man Arrested for Threatening to Kill Woman and “Everyone Who Did This To Him”

Local Crime Watch Group Shuts Down Mini Pot Growing Operation
(two marijuana plants growing in a white pot.)

And there’s this item, which we reprint in full, with the name changed to protect the innocent until proven guilty:
Thief with Conscience Arrested After Burglary

According to a report from the Manatee County Sheriff’s Office, at about 10:30 p.m. on Tuesday, James Denton, 42, who lives at the Crown Mobile Home Park, broke into a friend’s mobile home and took a play station, camping roll, hair dryer and other miscellaneous items, the report said.

… Denton confessed to a deputy that he was trying to get in touch with the victim of the burglary to help him because Denton’s girlfriend had been arrested and he was trying to get money for her bail of $500, he told the deputy. That’s why he took the items from his friend’s home after he discovered his friend was not there.

Denton was arrested and charged with Burglary to an Unoccupied Dwelling.

The stolen items were all returned.

Denton remains in the Manatee County Jail on a $25,000 bail bond.