Public Safety Crime Alerts Repeatedly Expose Minors

Riya Shah, a lawyer at Juvenile Law Center in Philadelphia, tells me that Public Safety’s inclusion of the faces of apparent minors in the Clery Crime Alerts is “very different” from the standards of protection enjoyed by other juveniles who have been accused or even convicted of crimes. When it comes to keeping court records confidential, Shah says the New York laws are actually quite protective and says that records are “almost never” available to the public online.

Shah points to an irony: Minors who plead guilty for crimes enjoy a greater right to privacy than minors who are merelyalleged perpetrators of crimes. In other words, if one of the boys accused of trying to steal a bicycle had been cuffed, fingerprinted, arraigned, and convicted, his photo, and the fact that he committed a crime, would be sealed under lock and key. His face would certainly not have been sent to over 40,000 people. When I emailed Shah pictures of the alerts, she said what struck her the most “is how protective juvenile court records are in New York versus this.”