AMBER Alert Partners With Facebook 205
wiredmikey writes "The AMBER Alert program, credited with the safe recovery of 525 children across the country, has a new ally today: Facebook. Facebook users are able to sign up to receive AMBER Alert bulletins for their state which will be sent to them through the Facebook 'News Feed' feature. An estimated 800,000 children are reported missing every year. AMBER Alert is a voluntary partnership involving law-enforcement agencies and broadcasters. The new Facebook AMBER Alert pages represent an important expansion of the secondary distribution system and will enable AMBER Alerts to dramatically increase the reach of and impact of these life-saving bulletins."
Re:Low success rate? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Do those numbers make sense? (Score:4, Informative)
Some interesting stats from the FBI: [fbi.gov]
As of December 31, 2007, there were 105,229 active missing person records in NCIC. Juveniles under the age of 18 accounted for 54,648 (51.93%) of the records, and 12,362 (11.75%) were for juveniles between the ages of 18 and 20.
During 2007, 814,967 missing person records were entered into NCIC, a decrease of 2.53% from the 836,131 records entered in 2006. Missing person records cleared or canceled during the same period totaled 820,212. Reasons for these removals include: the subject was located by a law enforcement agency; the individual returned home; or the record had to be removed by the entering agency due to a determination that the record was invalid.
In 2007, there were 518 records entered as Abducted by a Stranger; 299,787 entered as Runaway; and 2,919 entered as Abducted by Non-Custodial Parent. This only accounts for 303,224 entries of the 418,967 entered, or 72.4%, which is an increase from 297,632 entries of the 836,131 entered, or 35.6%, in 2006.
Re:Low success rate? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Low success rate? (Score:5, Informative)
800000 "children reported missing" includes anyone under the age of 18 who runs away. (This is about 1% of the Children in the US in the 0 thru 17 age group).
Amber Alerts are specifically for kidnapped or abducted children usually less than 16.
An Amber alert will not be issued for your 14 yro daughter when she runs off with that creep she met on line.
Its not the same thing.
Re:The "low" number is misleading. (Score:4, Informative)
If you can get by the terrible 3-D excel charts, the numbers are moderately interesting. 72% of the issued amber alerts in 2009 were for parental abductions (Table 9, pg 20), so your conclusion is wrong. See also table 15, pg 29.
http://www.amberalert.gov/pdfs/09_amber_report.pdf [amberalert.gov]
Re:Low success rate? (Score:4, Informative)
800000 "children reported missing" includes anyone under the age of 18 who runs away. (This is about 1% of the Children in the US in the 0 thru 17 age group).
Amber Alerts are specifically for kidnapped or abducted children usually less than 16.
An Amber alert will not be issued for your 14 yro daughter when she runs off with that creep she met on line.
Its not the same thing.
Nicely said, I just wanted to add one more little detail that whittles the numbers down a little more: The point of the Amber Alert is "this just happened, they're out and about right now, do you see them?" It's about getting the general public, mostly people on highways, to look around and see if they see the suspect vehicle.
Re:The "low" number is misleading. (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Low success rate? (Score:4, Informative)
Yeah, I get that, but....
But clearly excluding custodial cases the rate is not zero, (Groene) and it only looks like zero because the system has been swamped with custodial cases.
Because Amber currently includes all (or a great deal) of the traditional cases, Police end up treating it that way, as do the citizens. So the police response is the same. No augmentation. No checkpoints. No vehicle searches. Its just another Custodial case 98% of the time, and that is exactly how it is treated.
When these guys did their study, I sincerely doubt they weeded out BUT the cases where Amber Alerts were issued in a timely manner, given the originally intended response, escalated in a logical way, and in response to a prove threat level. (Like Groene, Sarah Maynard, etc).
They just did a statistical abstraction of cases where police acted in the normal way using the normal assumptions.
If we dialed it back to original intent, the rate might be better yet.