Anyone questioning that fact can simply look at the television shows in 2009 compared to the shows we had in 1999. These days, on any given night you’ll have the opportunity to see on the average 14 so-called “reality” shows. Also, just look at the number of celebrities we know by name for being nothing more than a person with a video camera (and camera man) in their living room – Jon and Kate, Kim Kardashian, Kendra Wilkinson – well, you get the idea.

 In south Florida, newspapers like The Palm Beach Post and The Sun Sentinel have started posting mug shots on their Web sites recently for their respective counties- Palm Beach and Broward. And Thugshot.com posts mug shots for two or three counties in south Florida and are adding more counties soon.

The popularity of mug-shot-mania are also due to the fact that that reproducing them are cheap, if not free. Plus, they are “legally safe” to publish. Mug shots are public domain. You can’t be sued for publishing a government document.

There are also many printed publications dedicated to printing mug shots, such as Cellmates, Busted, and MugSHOTS. These publications are usually printed weekly and rarely cost more than $1. While these publications seem to be gaining popularity in the past two years, Web sites are clearly the place where people are more likely to flock. This is because Web sites have the ability to post mug shots on a daily basis and blogs such as Thugshot.com give readers the ability to post comments on every post.