Most people have their portraits made many times in their lives,from birth through school pictures to college graduation, and thenthey repeat the process with their own children.

But there is one portrait session for which most people do notenjoy saying “cheese:” The one where mug shots are being taken atthe jail following their arrest.

“Some of them actually do smile …,” Lincoln County Jail WardenCharles Welch said with a laugh. “When they come in drunk.”

Welch leads a team of jailers who, among their other duties, areresponsible for taking pictures of people arrested by area lawenforcement agencies. Once the deputies, police officers ortroopers drop suspects off at the jail, it is the duty of Welch’screw to complete the process of getting them booked into thejail.

One of the first parts of the processes is to get the suspectsto flash their pearly whites. Or not, said shift supervisor BeckyHowell.

“We’ll tell you to stand up straight, with your heels againstthe wall, and if you have a hat on, you’ll have to take it off,”she said. “They’ve got to stand between the ruler and the ‘LCSO’ onthe wall, and we tell them to show no facial expression. That’s whythey don’t smile.”

Of course there are other obvious reasons that visitors to thejail don’t smile, the jailers said.

“Sometimes they get rowdy,” said Welch, who has been a jailerfor around 20 years. “Then we have to lock them up and get theirmug shot after they cool down.”

Howell said learning to deal with people’s different reactionsto being booked is part of the territory. She said part of what’simportant when dealing with people is to remember to be polite andunderstanding, no matter who they are or what they’re accusedof.

“Even if they’re rowdy or drunk, you have to know how to talk toeach one,” she said. “They’re all different, and you’ve got totreat them with respect.”

But sometimes a situation calls for more drastic measures, shesaid.

“You’ve got a few that will cuss you, and they’ll talk about youand insult you and everything else,” she said. “You have to tune itout, but you’ll have to take a little different tone withthose.”

On a normal weekday there are usually an average of four or fivepeople who are booked into the Lincoln County Jail. Weekends can bea different matter, especially on days that call forcelebration.

“The weekends we might do 10 or 11 a day,” Welch said. “Andholidays there are even more of them, especially when there areroadblocks and things like that.”

There have been some interesting faces to come through the jailas well, Welch said.

While every person is interesting in their own way, of coursethe celebrities stick out, such as the time then-New Orleans Saintsand current Atlanta Falcons wide receiver Joe Horn came throughafter being brought in by the Highway Patrol for speeding severalyears ago. To the best of their recollection, jailers said he wasdefinitely traveling at an excessive speed.

“He told MHP he was running late,” Welch said, laughing.

After they’re taken, the mug shots then go into a digital filingsystem that holds files on everyone who has been to jail since thesystem was installed.

Welch said the digital system has been a Godsend. He rememberswhen mug shots were taken with a Polaroid camera.

“They held up this piece of paper with a number on it and theywere filed by their booking number. We had more paperwork than wecould stand, and there just wasn’t enough room to storeeverything,” he said. “Now we can just print them, or e-mail them,or whatever.”

After the mug shot is taken, the prisoner is fingerprinted ifare felony charges are involved. The prints are then transferreddigitally to Pearl, where all the fingerprints in the state arestored in a facility not far from the Central MississippiCorrectional Facility.

“And it pops right up automatically if they’re wantedsomewhere,” Welch said.

The current fingerprint scanner has been with the jail since itwas built in 2000, Welch said, and he said jail personnel arekeeping their fingers crossed for a new one in coming years. Thenewer ones automatically import the prisoner’s booking informationand stores it with the fingerprints, while the one the jailcurrently has requires the information to be put in again.

The prisoner is then given the well-known “one phone call” whentheir bond is set, and they’re taken to their cells. They may beput in either a two-man cell or in open blocks with up to 19 otherprisoners, depending on their situation, and sometimes theirpreference.

But no matter how many times a subject has been through thesystem, he has a new photo taken each time he returns. In addition,any distinctive marks are recorded by photo as well.

“Hold up your left arm, hold your head up, and move your shirtover,” Howell told a man as he was being photographed recently.

Once all his tattoos were showing clearly, she took thepicture.

And it would make sense that with all the different placespeople will put tattoos, the tattoo photo process can getinteresting, jailers said.

“Somebody with a lot of tattoos, trying to get them all shot,that can be challenging, to say the least,” Welch said.