News and articles How to remove your mugshot from JailBase: the site is 404ing, so today's job is the Google result

Every page on jailbase.com returns a 404 right now. We checked the homepage, the search page and the opt-out page on September 8, 2026, and all of them error out. That changes today's job: instead of filing an opt-out you can't reach, you clear the leftover result out of Google with the free tool for pages that are gone. Here's that, and here's the opt-out for if the site comes back: jailbase.com has not served its own pages since April 2024, so treat the opt-out as the second half of the job, not this week's.

What you actually get

Two different outcomes, and only one of them is available today. Google's tool for outdated pages takes the result out of search without touching the page, and Google's help page says an approved request expires once 180 days have passed. JailBase's own opt-out is the one that removes the page, 90 days after you request it, and it's free. Neither one touches the sheriff's roster your booking was copied from.

What you have to hand over

For Google, a Google account and the exact URL. For the JailBase opt-out, an email address and a US mobile number, and that is the entire form. No ID document, no court paperwork, no expungement order, no notarization, no fee. Their privacy policy is dated March 14, 2012 and says they may pass personal information to business partners so those partners can send you promotional material, so use an address and a number you don't mind giving away.

What stops it working

Not having the exact URL. Both routes are keyed to one address, and with the site erroring out you can't search JailBase for your own record, so the Google result is the first place to copy it from, and the Wayback Machine is the fallback. And it's one URL per booking, because the opt-out is per record and not per person. Two arrests mean two forms and two separate clocks.

Copy the JailBase URL out of the Google result

Search your full name in quotes, then your name with the county or the jail, and find the jailbase.com result. Copy the link straight out of the search result instead of clicking through, because every JailBase address is erroring and what you need is the URL, not the page. If two JailBase results come back, copy both. Those are two records and they get handled separately. If no jailbase.com result comes back, search web.archive.org for jailbase.com/arrested and filter on your name: the archive holds the record pages the live site no longer serves, and the URL is what you need either way.

Then paste it into a browser and see what answers. You should get a bare page headed Error: 404 Not Found, which is what we got on the homepage, the search page and the opt-out page on September 8, 2026. That 404 is the condition the Google request runs on, so confirm it before you file rather than after.

File the outdated content request with Google today

The tool is Refresh Outdated Content, and it's the right one precisely because you don't own the page. Google's help page says verified site owners use a different tool, so don't go hunting through Search Console for the Removals report. Sign in with any Google account, paste the URL, submit. One request per URL.

Google grants these when the page no longer exists or has changed significantly, and a 404 is exactly that. What you get back is an index change and nothing more: the help page says plainly that the tool updates Google's results and does not remove anything from the web.

Put a date 180 days out in your calendar, because Google says a request expires once 180 days have passed since it was approved. If JailBase is serving that address again by then, expect the result to come back, and find out by searching your name rather than by assuming either way.

When jailbase.com answers again, the opt-out is free and it's two fields

Everything below is JailBase's own flow as their pages last described it: the opt-out instructions as of January 2024, the About and privacy pages as of April 2024, and the record-page form itself from a 2022 capture. If the site returns rebuilt, expect it to differ, and re-read their pages before you trust these steps. Don't start at jailbase.com/opt-out. That page has no form on it. It carries a Step 1 and a Step 2 and points you at the search page, and it's where people give up. The form lives on your own record and the record is the only route to it.

So: the search page first, where the fields are First name and Last name. Open your record. On that page the link reads Opt Out and it sits inside the Details block directly under Notes:, not at the bottom of the page where their own instructions send you. It's tagged nofollow and noindex, so nothing on the site and no search will surface it for you.

The form is headed request opt-out and shows You are requesting to Opt-Out the following individual: with your name in capitals. Two fields, Your E-mail: and Mobile phone:, the second wanting a US number typed as +15555555555 because they send a verification code by SMS. Neither field is marked required in the page's own markup, but both channels get used to verify you, so fill in both, then press Request Opt-Out.

Mark 90 days, and ignore the 30 you'll also see

The opt-out page says 90 days: once an opt-out is requested for a page, they automatically remove the page 90 days from the date it was requested. Their About page says 30 days in two places, and one of its own FAQ answers on the same page says 90. Plan on 90 and treat 30 as a bonus.

There is no ticket number, no status page and nobody to chase, so the calendar entry is the entire follow-up system. When the date comes up, search your name and open the URL yourself.

If the page is gone but the search result is still sitting there, that's when you run the Google request a second time. JailBase says it sets a removed page up to come out of the major search engines, then says it doesn't control them and it can take a few weeks, so that half is on you either way.

Nobody can charge you, and court paperwork won't move them

Paying for a JailBase removal buys you nothing. Their own FAQ answer is blunt: JailBase does not accept money to remove arrest information, they say they have never accepted it, and if someone charged you they advise asking for a refund and reporting them. If you were solicited in California, Civil Code 1798.91.1 makes it unlawful to solicit, require or accept a fee to remove a booking photograph, and it gives you the greater of $1,000 per violation or your actual damages plus fees, with each payment counted as a separate violation.

Sending them your disposition doesn't work either. Their FAQ says the policy is not to remove records unless they're inaccurate, and that what happens in a court of law, when charges are dropped for example, is outside the scope of the site. The bar for inaccurate is narrow on top of that: if their information matches what's reported publicly, they consider it accurate. The opt-out is the route, not the paperwork.

The one thing the contact form is for is a real factual error, a wrong name, a wrong charge, a booking that isn't yours. That form asks for a name, an email address and a message, and only the email address is marked required.

If the arrest was in Florida, there's a statute with a 10-day clock

Florida Statute 901.43 lets you or your legal representative send a written removal request by registered mail to the publisher's registered agent, with sufficient proof of your identity and specific information identifying the photograph. The publisher then has 10 calendar days to remove it without charge, and may not republish it.

The teeth are real. A court can enjoin continued publication, impose $1,000 a day for noncompliance with that injunction and $5,000 a day if the photo is republished, and award your attorney fees, and refusal counts as an unfair or deceptive trade practice under chapter 501.

The blocker is the agent. JailBase publishes no company name and no mailing address anywhere on the site and its domain registration sits behind a privacy service, so as of today we can't tell you where to send it. The statute also reaches a publisher only if it charges for removal or its primary business is publishing booking photos commercially, and JailBase says loudly that it has never charged. That makes this a question for a lawyer, not a letter you mail this afternoon.

What none of this touches

The opt-out removes one JailBase page. It doesn't reach the sheriff's or county jail's own roster, which is where the booking came from and which JailBase links to as View Source, and it doesn't reach the other sites that copied the same booking. Every one of those is a separate request to a separate person.

It seals nothing and expunges nothing. Taking a mugshot page off an aggregator changes not one line in the court's file or the arresting agency's record, and it isn't a substitute for whatever sealing or expungement you're entitled to where the arrest happened.

And don't tell yourself the record is gone because the site is erroring. The 404 page names a malformed address in its own error text, which reads like a server misconfiguration rather than a shutdown, so those pages can come back at the same URLs. Search your name once a quarter. The site has been erroring since 2024, so this is a long watch, not a monthly chore, and if a JailBase page ever answers again, that is the day you file the opt-out.

JailBase is one copy of one booking

File the Google request yourself today, it's free and it takes a few minutes. When the same booking is also sitting on four other mugshot sites and a local news page, Content Removal is $499 to $1,999, set by what each site's own policy allows, and we file under that policy, chase the replies, and re-check every page after a site says it has acted. We tell you which URLs have a route before you pay anything.

Have us do it.

Everything above, filed for you, chased for you, and reported back. One flat fee.

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Written by Drew Chapin, who ran all of this on his own name first.