Hey everyone,
I was recently at an in-law’s house, and in light of a few recent high-profile child murder cases, one of my in-laws expressed amazement on how many lives amber alerts have saved. This got me to thinking…are they really effective? There is some evidence out there that shows that amber alerts rarely, if ever, help find abducted children as most of these abductions are solved by good old fashioned police work. Also, there is evidence to show that many child abductions are related to domestic disputes (as opposed to random abduction), and harm is rarely intended to the child involved. Are there any negative or unintended consequences of amber alerts? For fear of touching a live wire (‘How can you say that? This is about the children!’), I honestly wonder about the effectiveness of this system.
Bigs
*From 2003 to 2006 independent researcher Timothy “The Griffon” Griffith conducted the first third-party investigation of the Amber Alert system. He found that, while state and local governments were claiming huge numbers of children “rescued,” they were actually full of shit.
Most of the children “saved” by the Amber alert hadn’t been in any danger in the first place (in most cases they’d been taken by legal guardians arguing over custody rights). The few children who WERE abducted by psychopaths usually died before the Amber Alert could even go online.*http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2008/07/20/abducted/?page=1
*In the first independent study of whether Amber Alerts work, a team led by University of Nevada criminologist Timothy Griffin looked at hundreds of abduction cases between 2003 and 2006 and found that Amber Alerts - for all their urgency and drama - actually accomplish little. In most cases where they were issued, Griffin found, Amber Alerts played no role in the eventual return of abducted children. Their successes were generally in child custody fights that didn’t pose a risk to the child. And in those rare instances where kidnappers did intend to rape or kill the child, Amber Alerts usually failed to save lives. …
In the first independent study of whether Amber Alerts work, a team led by University of Nevada criminologist Timothy Griffin looked at hundreds of abduction cases between 2003 and 2006 and found that Amber Alerts - for all their urgency and drama - actually accomplish little. In most cases where they were issued, Griffin found, Amber Alerts played no role in the eventual return of abducted children. Their successes were generally in child custody fights that didn’t pose a risk to the child. And in those rare instances where kidnappers did intend to rape or kill the child, Amber Alerts usually failed to save lives. ……
What Amber Alerts do create, its critics say, is a climate of fear around a tragic but extremely rare event, pumping up public anxiety. Griffin calls it “crime control theater,” and his critique of Amber Alerts fits into a larger complaint on the part of some criminologists about crime-fighting measures - often passed in the wake of horrific, highly publicized crimes - that originate from strong emotions rather than research into what actually works. Whether it’s child sex-offender registries or “three strikes” criminal-sentencing rules, these policies, critics warn, can prove ineffective, sometimes costly, and even counterproductive, since they heighten public fears and distract from threats that are at once more common and more tractable….
In fact, according to Fox, stranger abductions remain exceedingly rare: In the United States, he calculates, the odds of a child being kidnapped by someone he or she doesn’t know are roughly one in a million. *
One issue I have with Amber Alerts is that the EAS broadcasts on TV are always so staticy that I can’t understand what’s being said anyway, and I have yet to find a web site that posts the info in a timely manner.
We get them on our “zombie alert” signs on the roadways, and they never post enough information to do anything, just the words “Amber Alert” and a car style and color, and a note to call some information number that often doesn’t work or won’t accept calls.
I will say that I wonder if the Amber Alerts DO work (not in their intended manner, of course) as a shaming device to help convince feuding family members to quit using their kids as negotiation tools. If that is the case (the article above seems to indicate it’s possible) then it is helpful, just not for stranger abductions or abductions for rape/murder.