Entrepreneur Sells Mug Shots

Posted at September 20, 2007

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America loves a good mug shot. The more frizzed, frazzled and frantic, the better. An Orlando entrepreneur has seized on that fascination, recently starting “JAIL,” a weekly newspaper filled with nothing but the unflattering thumbnails. Page after page, with only a few ads in between.

“A mug shot is a couple notches below your driver’s license picture,” said Devin James, 41, dressed casually in sweat pants, sneakers and a ball cap. “And everyone takes a messed up driver’s license picture.”

In JAIL, the stars are the readers’ neighbors, charged with everything from drug possession to prostitution to murder. Thousands of arrests each week in the paper’s three-county distribution area provide plenty of material, all obtained free from police and sheriff’s departments.

James carefully chooses the mug shots on the front page — issues with attractive women on the front move fastest.

“Sex sells,” James said.

James said he got the idea nearly a decade ago after a three-month stint in the Orange County Jail after he says he got into a loud fight with a girlfriend and the police sided with her. He denies hitting her.

Using $600 he earned moving furniture, James started the newspaper in December.

“The timing is right for this paper now,” he said. “America is in the midst of a crime wave.”

Associated Press




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