In Denton, Texas, if you get arrested, your mugshot gets blasted over Twitter. In Tampa Bay, you'll wind up on this incredibly slick site detailing the crime, height, age, and of course, your glamorous mugshot.
It really is a glorious website—it's constantly updated, with a great design and meticulous, nicely presented statistics that makes the Smoking Gun look a decade behind the times. Seriously, I can find everyone who's committed a crime in the last 60 days in Hillsborough County under 5 feet tall in two clicks. Suspect your crazy uncle got booked for picking up Grettle, the neighborhood's call granny last week? Search by name and zip. Ridiculous, amazing, scary and marvelous all at once. Clicking on the scrolling list gives you a pop-up like this guy who obviously didn't get to fully enjoy his 4/20:
It's also got a semi-live feed of crime stories from the St. Petersburg Times, who runs the site using info pulled from the county sheriff's open website. Will the growth this kind of site put an end to police and sheriff's departments making their arrest stats and requisite mugshots so easy to mine and re-package? Or we are looking at a near-future where your drunken sprees be posted to your Facebook wall automatically by your friendly neighborhood police department? [Mugshots]