Maine does not offer what most states do — which changes the whole approach.
An arrest is not a conviction. A search result does not make that distinction, and in Maine a booking photo can outlast the case that produced it by years.
Maine arrest and booking records are public under the Maine Freedom of Access Act (1 M.R.S. §§ 400 to 434). That statute exists so the public can watch how police and courts use their power, which is worth having. The side effect is that a for-profit mugshot site can request those records in bulk, republish them, and be indexed by Google within days — without your consent, and regardless of how the case ended.
This is what most removal pages get wrong about Maine, so it is worth saying plainly: Maine has no general statutory authority to seal or expunge a non-conviction record. Its criminal-history framework simply does not provide the relief most other states do.
That does not mean nothing works — it means the order of operations is different. Where other states change the source record first and let the websites follow, in Maine you go straight at the publishers and the search index, leaning on accuracy and outdatedness rather than a court order. A pardon is the narrow exception, and it is a long road.
Anyone promising to 'get your Maine arrest expunged' should be asked which statute they intend to use.
Send each site a written request naming the exact URL and the specific record, with the disposition or court order attached if you have one. Keep copies and dates — the paper trail is what makes a later legal demand credible instead of noisy.
If a site demands payment to take a booking photo down, do not treat that as the price of the problem. Several states prohibit pay-to-remove outright, and a demand for money is worth documenting either way.
A page removed from a site can sit in Google's index for weeks. Two different jobs:
Mugshot sites syndicate from one another, so the first result is rarely the only one. Search your name alone, your name with the county, and your name with "arrest" and "mugshot" — then check image results separately. A photo often survives on a page whose text was already removed.
Online Reputation Repair pursues removal at the source, chases the syndicated copies, and handles de-indexing — and tells you plainly when a record is not realistically removable rather than billing you to find out.
Free confidential review — the form below
Often, yes — the route depends on how the case ended and what the state record now shows. The free review determines which grounds apply to your URLs, honestly, including when removal is unlikely.
Paying the publisher is almost never the right first move, and several states prohibit pay-to-remove outright. Change the underlying record where possible, then pursue the site and the search index on the merits.
Straightforward platform-policy removals move in days; record changes and publisher negotiations take weeks or more. A written plan includes per-URL timeframes.
Tell us what was published and where — URLs help. A real person reviews it and comes back with a plain answer about what can and cannot come down, before anything is billed.