Status and race in the Stanford rape case: Why Brock Turner's mug shot matters

The story of a star athlete at an elite American universitywho sexually assaulted an unconscious womanbehind a dumpsterhas been everywhere this week.

From the newsstand to thewater cooler and even in classrooms,it's hard to go anywhere right nownow without hearing Brock Turner's name andeven harder to gomore than 10 clicks onlinewithout seeing his face.

But which face do people see when they look at the ex-Stanford swimmer (and newly-convicted sex offender)?

• CNN host Ashleigh Banfield on giving voice to the survivor in the Stanford rape case

Turner has generated more media coverage in the wake of his sentencing than he likely ever would have as an Olympian, but critics say that theimages usedin many stories about his case fail to illustrate why.

Why, for instance, would a news outlet choose to run photos of Turner swimming for Stanfordin a story about how angry people are over his "unusually lenient"six-monthjail sentence?

Why was Turner's smiling yearbook photo used in coverage of his victim's now-viral impact statement, his father's controversial letter of defence, and of the petition to remove Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge Aaron Persky from office over the outcome of this case?

And why did so many articles showthe 20-year-oldwearing a suit and tiestanding next to his mother outside of a courtroom, asopposed to a mugshot showing what he looked like on the night of the crime when he was arrested?

Whilesome of the biascriticism may indeed bevalid. Butthere is one answer to thequestionof why journalists didn't use Turner's official mugshot from the start: They couldn't.

The #NoMugShotmovement

Despite the fact that Turner was arrested in January of 2015 and then convicted in March of this year his actual mugshot wasn't made available to the publicuntil Monday, after the case had blown up worldwide.

It wasn't for lack of trying by the media to get the shot.

According toNew York Magazine's The Cut, authorities involved in the case had been volleying responsibility for releasing the photo amongst themselves as pressure mounted.

TheSanta Clara Sheriff's Department toldmultiplejournalists that the arresting agency theStanford Department of Public Safety must make the decision on whether or not to share the mugshot.Stanford, on the other hand, said that the call mustcome from theSheriff's Department.

Meanwhile, on Twitter, the hashtags #NoMugShotand #WheresTheMugShotpicked up steam as news outlets ran the only pictures of Turner they could: Wire images of the sex offender in court, headshotsfrom school and, in some cases, sports photos.

Eventually, thanks in part to public pressure and media requests, the Santa Clara Sheriff's Department released Turner's sentencing photo. According to NBC, these photos are taken when a convicted defendant is handed over to state custody.

There was no smile in this picture, but Turner still appearedclean-cut in a suit and tie.

16 months later, the booking photo

What the public still insisted on seeing is what's known as abooking photo an image taken when someone is arrestedthat, under California law,is a public record.

It wasn't until Monday evening, more than 16 months after theoriginal mugshot was taken and the crime occurred, thatthe Stanford Department of Public Safetyreleased it to the press.

Michigan-based Diana Prichardshared the formal request she made to Stanford a few hours before it complied, and is nowbeing credited in part for the photo's publication.

The privilege of being white

The fact that it took authorities 16 months and much prodding to release a booking photo from the Stanford sexual assault case even after Turner was convicted is enough to raise questions on its own given the seriousness of hiscrimes.

In a country where racial and socioeconomicdisparity areso well-documented and pervasive, particularly within the criminal justice system, Turner's case got many citizens wondering: Would the ex-Stanford swimmer's sentence have been different if he wasn't white?

Areport submitted to the United Nations Human Rights Committee by The Sentencing Project in 2013 showedthatAfrican-American males are six times more likely to be incarcerated than white males in the U.S., and 2.5 times more likely than Hispanic males.

In California, where Turner was sentenced, the ratio of black people to white people in prison was8.8 to1 as of 2014.

While every criminal case is different, there are plenty of rulings involving black students to contrast Turner's against like the case of Corey Batey, a 19-year-old Vanderbilt University football starwho was also convicted onthree felony counts of sexual assault.

15 to 25 years for black offender

In April, aTennessee judgeordered Batey to serveminimum sentence of 15 to 25 years in prison "3,000 per centlonger than what Brock Turner was given for a comparable crime," Shaun King noted in The New York Daily News.

The parallels between these cases in the wake of Turner's sentencing hasn't gone unnoticed. Nearly 200,000 people have now shared the Facebook image contrasting these felons below:

Many writers and academics are now saying that, at best, the fact Turner's mug shot was withheld is illustrative of the racial disparities within America's criminal justice system.

At worst, choosing to show images of him swimming,smiling and lookingevery bit theall-American athlete could influence public perception to the point that his conviction is called into question.

Questions about media portrayal

"Turner's name may be permanently marred by the crime, but he's granted a reprieve by only having images of him smiling in dress suits available to the public," writes Dayna Evans for The Cut. "Presenting him as a well-dressed college athlete instead of the convicted felon he is could also openthe victim's statementsup to unfair scrutiny."

Kelly Ellis highlighted the impact of media representation in crime cases on Twitterby comparingtheWashington Post's coverage of Turner's case to three separatestories about black men accused of sexassault:

Arguingthat there's "inevitably a racial element" to the selection of images in crime reporting,Stassa Edwards explains that mugshots"fundamentally convey who a person is (or, what they have done, at least); they make them suspicious and criminal."

"Stories of Turner illustrated with school portraits resistthe visual classification of him as a criminal body; in effect, the absence of a mugshot preserves his promising reputation," she writes for Jezebel. "In April 2015, an Iowa newspaper washeavily criticizedfor showing the yearbook photographs of three white suspects who had been arrested for possession of stolen property. Black suspects, arrested for similar crimes, had their mugshots used instead; a persistent reminder that the photograph is never neutral, neither in its selection nor implication."

Others are pointing out that it's not only criminals who are held to a double standard inphotographic representations. Even more problematicis the way that black victims of crime are portrayed.

Portrayal of black victims

In 2015,University of Cincinnati police officer Ray Tensing was indicted for the murder of an unarmed black man namedSam DuBose.

As Fusion notes,NBC, BBC, CNN and other mainstream media outletsuseda mugshotof Dubosefrom a previous, unrelated arrest to report the story. Tensing, on the other hand, was shown in his police uniform.

The images used to report on the deaths of unarmed teenagers Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and Trayvon Martin in Sanford, Florida, drew similar criticism.

In the wake of Brown's death, thousands of young black people took to Twitter on the hasthag #IfTheyGunnedMeDown with images of themselves, both polished and casual, wondering which photos would be used to tell their storiesif they themselveswere killed by police.

"More research is perhaps needed to best understand the scope of the problem, but if there is a problem it will, like other ways in which blacks are portrayed in the media, have an effect on white thought," wroteGarrett S. Griffin, author ofRacism in Kansas City, after Turner's mugshot was finally released.

"If we create a common standard for arrested persons, such as, 'No matter your race, the media should print no images except mugshots,' surely wecan also establish one for people who diein confrontations or mere benign situations involving the police," he posited.

"We can be more careful, and more equitable, about the stories we tell."