Criminal Faces

A young man faces the camera, shaved head, white t-shirt. The rigid lines of the jaw( 1) and cheekbones( 2) are softened by the gentle curve of full lips. The hard tattoos up the neck are sweetened by the teardrop tattooed under one eye. And those eyes: pale blue and looking directly at you.

It’s the mug shot( 3) that launched a thousand memes and hashtags, from #hotfelon to #FelonCrushFriday. Those baby blue eyes belong to one Jeremy Meeks, age 30, arrested last month in Stockton, California, on felony weapon charges. When the police department posted his mug shot on its Facebook page on June 18, the response from around the world was incredible.

By last week, Meeks’ photo had drawn more than 101,000 “likes,” close to 13,000 shares and nearly 27,000 comments, almost equally divided among those extolling( 4) Meeks’ desirability - “Momma, I’m in love with a criminal” - and those condemning the extollers for their shallowness( 5), their immorality, their hunger. “Seems to be no shortage of ladies who wouldn’t mind being Bonnie to his Clyde lol,” one commenter noted.

Accompanying the social media response has been commentary about the insidious nature of the Internet, the assault on privacy, a terrible decline in values. But the Jeremy Meeks phenomenon is only the latest, loudest episode in America’s long romance with the outlaw mug shot.

From the iconic images of Butch Cassidy and his crew to the gangster mug shots in 1920s and ‘30s pulp magazines, from the introduction of the FBI’s most-wanted posters in 1950 to today’s click-bait( 6) online mug shot slideshows, we have always looked for the chance to see the faces of accused criminals.

Social media has merely enabled us - via Mugshot Mondays, Pinterest boards and Tumblr feeds with arrest photos - to make public our once-private thoughts, posting them for the world to see.

In the 19th century, when police departments began inviting citizens to view photographic “rogues’( 7) galleries” to seek help in locating criminals, they quickly realized that the large crowds were not coming for civic duty alone. During the Depression, when true-crime magazines profited by running stories on public enemies like Pretty Boy Floyd and Bonnie and Clyde, the FBI began deploying mug shots to try to counteract the romanticization of bank robbers as Robin Hoods and to encourage the public to feel involved in their capture.

But the mug shot also has murkier( 8) functions, including both public shaming( 9) and public relations. Today, police departments and the news media have realized the power of the mug shot to draw interest, to attract clicks. It turns out that Americans still want to look into the mysterious eyes of the accused, and wonder. Even dream.

I remember, at age 8, first seeing one of the famous John Dillinger mug shots, taken after his Tucson arrest in January 1934 and six months before his dramatic death. While in some mug shots Dillinger looks timid or annoyed, in this one he looks insolent, wearing what appears to be a sneer( 10). Humphrey Bogart famously modeled his gangster characters after him, so I’d expected something similar to Bogie’s familiar face, his movie star smoothness( 11). But Dillinger looked rougher( 12). I felt like I’d been tricked( 13) by Hollywood and was uncovering something far more real. I saw menace in his eyes. Eyes that felt like a provocation.

So it was with Meeks. “OMG those eyes are looking through my soul,” wrote one Facebook commenter, echoing thousands more. “His eyes are what melts your heart,” wrote another commenter. Others saw in them a hustle( 14) : “Beautiful eyes. But such emptiness in them. I’ve seen that look before. Stay far away ladies.”

His tattoos evoked just as much speculation - especially that teardrop, which to some was an ominous signal that he had murdered: “That teardrop! Did he leave some poor mother crying for her child?”

“Devil beauty,” said another. You could almost hear the troubled whisper.

Such is the enduring power of the mug shot to transfix, upset, tantalize. Is that winsomeness( 15) in his expression, head tilted( 16) as if wronged( 17), eyes begging( 18) for understanding? Or are they the eyes of a lethal seducer, heavy with gang ink and ready to break your heart? Is he a common criminal or a living reminder of a larger societal crisis? For all those whose past experiences led them to see regret or misjudgment in Meeks’ face, there were others whose complex histories made them see only abuse, manipulation, loss. Mug shots permit us to project our own desires and fears onto an image that can’t talk back.

But what about when the image does talk back? In jailhouse interviews, Meeks has seized( 19) the chance to try to change the narrative. “I just want them to know that this is really not me,” he told local ABC affiliates, his voice trembling slightly. “I’m not some kingpin( 20).”

“I’m not what the police portray( 21) me to be,” Meeks said on “Inside Edition” a few days later. “I’m a family man, a husband, I’m a father and I’m a hard worker.” Claiming that he had left the gang life seven years ago, he said that he now worked in a warehouse for minimum wage. But “Inside Edition” did not verify the assertion, or even talk about it. The fantasy is so powerful that Meeks’ actual life cannot be permitted to disrupt it.

Both interviews were shot through prison plexiglass, Meeks’ voice tinny( 22) through the phone. It seems a metaphor for the mug shot itself. The relationship between subject and viewer forbids communication. He’s knocking on the glass and trying to tell us, You don’t understand. I’m not who you think I am. Listen to me. And we’re on the other side, deaf( 23) to his entreaties( 24). The noise over here is too loud.

He’s our smooth criminal, our deadly gangbanger( 25), our lost young man begging for reform - whatever we want him to be. And far more than any police photographer, we’ve caught him. We’ve captured him. He’s ours.