The Statistics

The statistics on missing children are terrifying.

•One in every 42 children will at some point be missing—either abducted, lost, or a runaway.
•Over 2100 children are reported missing each day
•Over 800,000 children are reported missing each year.
• 58% of victims were abducted within three blocks of home
• 57% of all abduction-murder cases were crimes of opportunity—impulse crimes that took place just because the perpetrator saw a vulnerable child
• 44% of abducted children were found dead in less than an hour
• 74% were dead within the first 4 hours
• 91% were dead within the first 24 hours

Minutes do count! That is why we at the Child Alert Center believe that our service responsiveness may help save lives.

There are several ways we categorize missing children:

• Your child can be missing briefly because of a minor misunderstanding or childhood forgetfulness, during which he may not even know that his parents consider him missing
• A child may also get lost, or may be injured in a place where he can’t call for help
• A child may be a runaway: the majority of missing adolescents are runaways
• A child may be a “throw-away”, a child actually told by a caretaker to leave home
• A child may be abducted by a relative, most often as the result of a custody or visitation dispute
• A child may be the victim of a non-family abduction. This category includes the Stereotypical Kidnapping, which is the most frightening of circumstances and, as a federal crime, requires the involvement of the FBI

* Statistics based on Office of Juvenile Justice and Deliquency Prevention