It's time for journalism to break the cycle of crime reporting

> We can decide that if we’re covering an arrest, we will follow the case through to its conclusion.

There's an important counterargument ignored here.

The reason arrests are public in the US Bill of Rights is because the British used secret arrests to suppress rebellion. Publicity of arrest, plus the use of a jury, is an important safeguard against tyranny.

In the pre-telecom days this was an almost unalloyed good; embarrassing for the arrested, yes, but it was easy for locals to see if something unusual was going on. Local newspapers were quite local. A true miscreant could slink off to start a new life (either reformed or not, who knows). With the Internet and search engines these days, the calculus is different -- but it's not obvious that a complete change of heart like this is a good thing. For example, discovering a pattern of petty harassment by the police will become significantly more difficult.

And as for mugshots: probably they are no longer necessary; in an earlier society with only moderate literacy they were an advancement.