New York Criminal Procedure Law § 160.50 provides automatic sealing of arrest records when charges are dismissed or a case terminates in a defendant's favor — one of the strongest arrest record protections in the United States. Here is how to use it to remove your mugshot from aggregator sites and Google.
CPL § 160.50 is one of the strongest arrest record sealing statutes in the US — it seals records when a criminal action terminates in favor of the defendant, including dismissals and acquittals, making sealed records inaccessible to the public and most employers.
CPL 160.50 sealing is supposed to be automatic — but in practice it does not always happen. If your case was dismissed and your records have not been sealed, you can and should petition the court directly to enforce the sealing order.
New York has no specific mugshot removal statute — the strategy relies on CPL 160.50 sealing orders combined with editorial requests to mugshot sites and targeted Google de-indexing after compliance.
Drug offense sealing under CPL § 160.58 applies to convictions — unlike § 160.50, which requires favorable termination. If you completed a drug treatment program in New York, § 160.58 sealing may be available and can support mugshot removal demands.
New York has no dedicated mugshot removal statute — there is no New York law that specifically requires mugshot aggregator sites to remove images upon request. What New York does have is one of the most comprehensive arrest record sealing frameworks in the United States, centered on Criminal Procedure Law Article 160. When combined with targeted editorial requests and Google's removal tools, New York's sealing laws give residents a practical pathway to mugshot removal that rivals or exceeds what many states with specific mugshot statutes provide.
The foundation of any New York mugshot removal strategy is obtaining confirmation that your records are sealed under CPL § 160.50, § 160.55, or § 160.58 — whichever applies to your situation. Each statute has different eligibility requirements and different scope. This guide covers all three, because many New Yorkers are eligible for sealing under a statute they are not aware of, and getting the sealing in place is the single most important step before approaching any mugshot site.
RemoveNews.ai helps New York residents assess their sealing status, prepare removal demands backed by sealing documentation, and navigate Google's de-indexing tools — with professional support when sites are unresponsive.
CPL § 160.50 sealing is more powerful than expungement in most states because it applies to the underlying arrest record itself — not just the conviction record. A New York sealing order makes records inaccessible to employers, landlords, and the general public. When you send a removal demand to a mugshot site with a CPL 160.50 sealing order attached, you are presenting a court order stating that these records are legally unavailable to the public. Many sites, particularly those with legal counsel, will comply with this demand to avoid liability — even though no specific statute compels them to.
New York Criminal Procedure Law § 160.50 provides for the sealing of records when a criminal action or proceeding terminates in favor of the accused. This is one of the broadest and strongest arrest record sealing provisions in any US state, and it covers a wide range of favorable terminations:
When CPL § 160.50 sealing occurs, all official records of the arrest and proceeding — including court records, police department records, prosecution records, and fingerprint records — are sealed. Access is restricted to the defendant, their attorney, courts in subsequent proceedings under specified conditions, and certain government agencies. The general public, employers, and mugshot aggregator sites are not among those permitted to access sealed records.
CPL § 160.50 is supposed to be automatic — the court issues a sealing order as part of the favorable termination of the case. In practice, this does not always happen correctly or completely. Records may not be fully sealed across all agencies, or the sealing order may not have been properly transmitted to all relevant record-holders. If your case was dismissed or you were acquitted but you are still seeing your mugshot in search results, confirm the sealing status by contacting the clerk of the court where your case was heard. If records were not properly sealed, petition the court for a sealing order pursuant to CPL § 160.50. The NYC Office of Criminal Justice and legal aid organizations can assist with this process.
Not everyone who ends up in a mugshot database was arrested for a felony or misdemeanor that went to trial. A significant number of arrest records — including mugshots — originate from arrests for violations or petty offenses: disorderly conduct, public intoxication, minor traffic violations, or similar low-level offenses that may have resulted in a conviction for a violation rather than a crime.
CPL § 160.55 provides for sealing of records when a criminal case terminates in a conviction for a violation — a category of offense in New York law that is less serious than a misdemeanor. If your case was resolved through a plea to a violation, or if charges were reduced to a violation as part of a negotiated disposition, § 160.55 sealing may apply.
The practical significance of § 160.55 for mugshot removal is the same as § 160.50: a court-issued sealing order that you can attach to a removal demand sent to mugshot aggregator sites. The sealing order under § 160.55 tells the site that the arrest record underlying your mugshot is legally sealed and unavailable to the public — the same fundamental argument, even if the underlying statutory mechanism differs.
The simplest way to confirm whether your records are sealed under CPL § 160.50 or § 160.55 is to contact the clerk of the court where your case was resolved and ask about the sealing status of the case. You can also request your own criminal history from the New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services (DCJS) — sealed records will appear on your own report with a notation that they are sealed, confirming the sealing occurred. If you used a defense attorney, they may have a copy of the sealing order. Bring any sealing documentation you have when contacting mugshot sites.
CPL § 160.58 provides a sealing pathway for a different category: individuals convicted of certain drug offenses who successfully completed an eligible drug treatment program. This is a "conditional sealing" — meaning it is available to people who were convicted, not just those whose cases terminated favorably.
Under CPL § 160.58, if you were convicted of a qualifying drug offense and successfully completed a judicially supervised drug treatment program (often called "drug court"), you may petition the court for sealing of:
CPL § 160.58 sealing is not automatic — it requires a formal petition to the court. The court has discretion to grant or deny the petition after considering the circumstances, the nature of the offenses, and whether sealing serves the interests of justice. However, for individuals who meet the eligibility criteria, the conditional sealing petition has a strong success rate when properly presented. Once granted, a § 160.58 sealing order carries the same weight as a § 160.50 sealing order for purposes of demanding mugshot removal from aggregator sites.
The distinction between § 160.50 and § 160.58 matters enormously. Section 160.50 applies when a case terminates in your favor — no conviction. Section 160.58 applies when there was a drug conviction but you subsequently completed a treatment program. Using the wrong statute in your removal request signals to the recipient that you do not understand your legal situation, which undermines the credibility of the entire request. Identify which statute applies to your case before drafting any demand letter.
Once you have confirmed that your records are sealed — or have obtained a sealing order through petition — you have the foundation for a legally backed demand to mugshot aggregator sites. Here is the process, step by step.
Search your full name combined with "mugshot," "arrested," your city or county, and the year of your arrest. The major mugshot aggregator sites active in New York include Mugshots.com, BustedMugshots.com, BustedNewspaper.com, JailBase.com, and ArrestFacts.com. Some county sheriff websites in New York also maintain public arrest logs — these require a separate request to the sheriff's department directly. Document every URL displaying your image before sending any demands.
Your removal demand letter to each mugshot site should be precise and legally grounded. Include:
Send the demand via email (use the privacy or legal contact email listed on the site, or their designated removal form if one exists) and retain copies of all correspondence. If you receive no response within 14 business days, send a follow-up citing your original demand date. If the site continues to refuse or ignore your demands, consult with professional news article removal specialists who can escalate through legal channels.
Mugshot site not responding to your demands? RemoveNews.ai provides professional escalation and legal-channel removal for New York residents. Call 855-239-5322 for a free assessment.
Get Expert HelpRemoving your mugshot from the source website is only half the battle. Even after a site removes your image, Google may continue to display cached versions of the removed page — or the mugshot URL may continue to appear in search results — for weeks or months until Google's crawlers naturally discover the removal. You do not need to wait passively for this to happen.
Before submitting a de-indexing request to Google, confirm that the mugshot site has actually removed the page (or replaced it with a redirect or 404 error). Visit the URL directly to confirm. Google's removal tools are designed for pages that have already changed at source — they will not de-index a page that is still live.
Google's Outdated Content Removal Tool (search.google.com/search-console/remove-outdated-content) allows you to report URLs where the page content has changed or the page has been removed, so Google can update its index faster than natural crawling would accomplish. Removals submitted through this tool typically process within a few days to two weeks. Submit every URL where your mugshot appeared, not just the main page.
If the mugshot site has not yet removed your image but you have a New York CPL § 160.50 sealing order, you can submit a direct request to Google's legal removal team. Google maintains a legal troubleshooter (support.google.com/legal/troubleshooter/1114905) for removal requests based on privacy laws. While Google has discretion in how it handles US-based privacy requests, a court-issued sealing order is a compelling document. New York's CPL § 160.50 is among the strongest arrest record sealing statutes in the country, and Google's legal team generally gives weight to court orders from state courts.
For a complete guide to Google de-indexing strategies, including what to do when the Outdated Content Tool is not sufficient, see our article on how to remove an arrest record from Google.
Some mugshot content is indexed by Google's European subsidiaries or published by media companies that operate in the EU. In these cases, you may be able to invoke GDPR Article 17 (the right to erasure) in a request to Google's European legal team, even if you are a US resident and GDPR does not technically apply to your situation. Many multinational publishers and Google's European operation have GDPR compliance processes in place, and they are sometimes responsive to right-to-be-forgotten style requests when presented with a compelling privacy argument — such as a court-issued sealing order declaring that an arrest legally "did not occur." This approach is worth attempting when standard Google removal requests fail. See our guide on sealed court records appearing in Google for more detail on this strategy.
New York's sealing statutes are powerful — but they have important limits that every person pursuing mugshot removal should understand. Proceeding without understanding these limits leads to demands that won't work and may undermine your credibility with sites that might otherwise comply.
If your arrest was covered by a New York newspaper, TV station, or online news outlet — the New York Times, the New York Post, a local TV station, or a community news site — New York's sealing statutes do not compel those publishers to remove their reporting. The First Amendment protects publishers' right to report on arrests, and that protection applies regardless of whether the arrest record was subsequently sealed.
The correct approach for news articles is editorial outreach: contacting the publication directly with your sealing order and making the proportionality argument — given that New York law has sealed the arrest record and that the arrest did not result in conviction, what public interest is served by the article's continued prominent display in search results? Many editors, when presented with a well-documented CPL § 160.50 sealing order, will choose to update or remove old arrest coverage as a matter of editorial ethics rather than legal obligation. See our guide on removing mugshots from Google and on removing arrest records from Google for the full editorial approach.
Courts have consistently held that CPL § 160.50 does not require private media organizations to remove published articles about arrests. In Matter of Dondi (1994) and subsequent New York case law, courts have affirmed that the sealing statute's requirement to seal records applies to government agencies, not to private publishers who independently obtained and published information about an arrest. The press's right to publish information that was publicly available at the time of publication is protected under the First Amendment. This does not mean you have no grounds to ask a publisher to remove coverage — it means that legal compulsion through § 160.50 alone is not available. Editorial outreach combined with the sealing documentation remains the right approach.
If your mugshot originates from an arrest in another state — a Florida arrest, for example, displayed on a mugshot site that serves New York — CPL § 160.50 does not govern the source records. The sealing argument based on New York law is weakened, though GDPR-adjacent arguments and editorial requests may still be effective. For out-of-state arrests, you would need to pursue sealing under that state's specific laws. For example, if you were arrested in New Jersey or Connecticut, those states have separate sealing frameworks that would govern the source records.
If your case resulted in a conviction that does not qualify for sealing under any New York statute, your options are more limited. CPL § 160.50 does not apply (it requires favorable termination), § 160.55 applies only to violation-level convictions, and § 160.58 requires drug offense completion and a waiting period. For convictions outside these categories, the practical strategies are: editorial outreach to mugshot sites using whatever documentation you do have (completion of sentence, time elapsed, lack of public interest); suppression strategies to push the mugshot lower in search results over time; and, where applicable, GDPR-based requests if the content reaches European audiences. Consult with a professional removal service about what is realistically achievable in your specific situation.
For New York City residents specifically, several resources exist to assist with sealing and arrest record issues that are not available in the rest of the state.
The New York City Mayor's Office of Criminal Justice (MOCJ) operates programs to assist New York City residents with record sealing, including free legal assistance for petitioning for sealing under CPL § 160.50 and § 160.58. MOCJ has partnered with legal aid organizations to make sealing assistance broadly available to eligible city residents. If you are a New York City resident and are unsure whether your records have been sealed or need assistance petitioning for sealing, this is the first resource to contact.
The Legal Aid Society of New York (legalaidnyc.org) provides free legal assistance for criminal record matters, including sealing petitions. The New York State Bar Association's pro bono programs and local legal aid organizations in other New York counties offer similar assistance statewide. If you cannot afford private legal counsel, these organizations can help you confirm sealing status and, if needed, file a petition.
If your records are already sealed, sending a removal demand to a mugshot site typically produces a response (either compliance or a response explaining the site's position) within two to four weeks. If you need to petition the court for a sealing order first, the timeline extends: petitions typically take two to six weeks to process, depending on the court's docket. Once you have the sealing order, the full timeline from order to clean Google search results is typically eight to twelve weeks, accounting for mugshot site processing time plus Google's cache updating.
Self-help approaches work well for the straightforward cases — sealed records, major aggregator sites with clear removal policies, and Google's standard tools. They become less effective when sites are unresponsive, when your case involves records that are partially sealed or sealed across some agencies but not others, when the mugshot appears within a news article rather than solely on an aggregator site, or when the situation has legal complexity (out-of-state records, multiple mugshot appearances at different dates). In those situations, professional removal services with legal expertise in New York record sealing produce results that self-help does not. Call 855-239-5322 for a free assessment of your situation.
New York's Clean Slate Act and Criminal Procedure Law § 160.50 are among the stronger record-sealing frameworks in the country -- but they still leave meaningful gaps. Conviction mugshots for offenses that don't qualify under Clean Slate, mugshots published by news outlets exercising First Amendment protections, and images hosted on out-of-state or international sites that fall outside New York's jurisdiction can all remain visible even after your underlying record has been sealed. In these situations, the available paths forward are Google de-indexing requests for content that has been removed at the source, NOINDEX requests submitted directly to site operators, and content suppression -- a systematic process of building authoritative positive content that displaces the mugshot from the first page of search results.
Our removal specialists have handled New York mugshot cases for over 13 years and have helped more than 5,000 clients work through situations exactly like this. Before recommending any course of action, we assess your case individually -- looking at your specific record status, where the mugshot appears, and which sites are involved -- so we can give you a realistic picture of what removal would require, what suppression would cost, and how long each path typically takes. The free consultation gives you that information with no obligation to proceed.
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