In America, the stigma of an arrest follows you for the rest of your life.
It's done like this: https://www.dw.com/en/german-police-arrest-25-suspects-over-...
(*There are definitely significant ways each is less free than the other and there's no rigorous way to say which is worse)
- If a government arrests someone, it should be forced to acknowledge both that it happened AND give the reason for arrest
- Media should have the right to report on arrests, without interference from the government.
This protects from abuses of power against for example political opponents. Of course, these same laws make arrests for common crimes problematic for the people being arrested. And I don't think it is feasible to codify an objective line between the two.
A reasoned discussion begins with an acknowledgment that the public has a right to monitor its government, and that individuals have a right to privacy. Unfortunately, the USA PATRIOT Act substantially dimmed the sunlight on government law-enforcement activity, and the Dobbs decision severely weakened privacy as an emergent constitutional right.
Edit: As I was writing this reply, I came up with an interesting legal theory. The right to publicity is traditionally understood as a celebrity's right to control the commercialization of his or her image. Might we say that the modern attention economy has turned everyone into a potential celebrity, and thus that everyone should be allowed to control the commercial publicity of their persona? This would draw a potentially meaningful line between the public's right to know (which I expect is popular) and the media's right to commercially exploit the salacious details of an accused's crime (which is, sadly, extremely popular; otherwise, it wouldn't be as prevalent as it is today). I'm sure attorneys and legal scholars have already explored this idea.
People get arrested, their name smeared, presumed guilty, and then go to trial and it wasn't them. Lives get ruined over for crimes not committed.
IIRC, Israel doesn't publish arrests, just convictions. So it's not a new idea.
Florida's "sunshine law" mandates arrests be public record, and it's lead everyone to believe there's more crazy people in Florida than anywhere else, which just isn't true.
Sure we shouldn't have black sites where people just get nabbed and disappeared either, but "guilty until proven innocent" is just a fancy idea if your life gets ruined before the trial. Look at what happened to Rittenhouse. Kicked out of his college and then "not guilty on all counts" at trial. It's a miscarriage of justice.
Edit: typos.
