Why I am killing the jail bookings

By Matt Ward – Sun Advocate Editor

I wanted to pass along to you something different we are doing in the Sun Advocate.
After a recent conversation with two high-ranking officials from two social services agencies in Carbon County, I have agreed to stop publishing weekly jail bookings. They argued, and I agree, that the bookings have a way of making sad situations in our community worse, or of stigmatizing people who are among the most needy.
Therefore, I’ve decided the jail bookings will no longer appear in this newspaper nor online at our website or social media channels.
I for one have always been a fan of police blotters and jail bookings. My philosophy has been that it is acceptable to publicize people’s bad behavior when it costs limited public resources—police, court or emergency services—to deal with their trouble-making.
But things are changing and we need to change with them. First, space for such things in this newspaper is becoming more limited. Notice we used to publicize births and deaths, marriages and divorces, bankruptcies and business licenses, and more. As advertising has declined and space become tighter, those snapshots of public life have all but disappeared.
Also, we depend more and more on our police agencies to tell us when something newsworthy happens on our streets. Luckily, we have some very good police officers who keep us abreast of such things (I hope!). But, something I will soon pursue is weekly access to police records from all local agencies. This way we can provide you with something a bit more substantial than just a list of names and charges. Our ability to independently decide what police situations are newsworthy or not is important to me. Today, we have to wait to be told. That’s got to change.
Finally, the fact is people are arrested everyday. Sadly their charges often inaccurately reflect the real story. Mental illness, for example, often plays into a person’s behavior in a way a simple arrest record doesn’t reflect. Also, people are innocent until proven guilty, and the people listed in jail bookings are at the beginning of the criminal justice process, not at the end, which is where we should really concentrate our efforts if we want to be fair. Thus, more coverage of the courts is in order and soon, God willing, you will see as much.
Nixing the jail bookings doesn’t mean we won’t report on arrests we think are newsworthy. Not at all. I will still be reading the bookings, just not publishing them.
—Matt Ward