AMBER Alert

[Night Watcher]

Basically, AMBER Alert is an alert you'll get if you go to google maps, look up an address, and there has been a recent abduction that happened to a child. (A little hard to explain so might just want to look it up)

What do you think about it? Is it an efficient way to prevent child abductions? Is it not and why? Do you think there are other actions they could take so the child wouldn't be abducted in the first place?

 

[Sir Codin]

I wouldn't say they're designed to "prevent" child abductions considering they're given off when a child has already been reported to have been abducted.

I'm also looking up statistics on the program right now and so far things don't look particularly impressive. It's looking like a classic example of a well-intentioned idea that still needs some severe kinks worked out.

 

[Psychic]

Hm, one could also make the argument that would-be abductors now know what spots people are keeping an eye on, and would therefore use other locations if they wanted to commit such a crime. Pretty much the whole "lighting rarely strikes the same place twice" idea.

Having a visual map could help investigators figure out patterns of where abductions tend to happen, but I'm not really sure how this would be of use to the public.

~Psychic

 

[Her]

It's apparently more successful in some states than others, one example being that in the first 10 years of it being used in Maryland (2003 to 2013), only two cases were unsuccessful. It is/was a good tool when used properly. But yeah, echoing Psychic, it's a largely outdated system nowadays because it's evolved to a point where the abductors themselves can easily make use of its implementation and use it as a tool to benefit them rather than the intended opposite. Not to mention that many people despise the new method (or one of the methods) of getting the alert out there - the smartphone alerts got more attention for pissing off those involuntarily subscribed to the network rather than the case itself.
It's unfortunately outlived its usefulness, with varying beliefs of its usefulness to begin with.

 

[Castaigne]

I'm gonna show my age here and say I remember Levi's call. I've never really understood while people get inconvenienced by an AMBER alert text. If you really can't take a minute out of your day to see what you're looking for and keep an eye out I think you have bigger problems in your heart than an inconvenient text message. That being said a new program could probably do a lot better with everything that's been invented in the past twenty years.

 

[gimmepie]

Honestly I don't see this being of much actual use. The police already have the technology to make a visual map of where abductions have occurred and unless a civilian sees the abduction occurring it is doubtful they'll notice anything different because of a notification they may or may not see on their phone.

 

[Caite-chan]

I know on most smart phones you can turn the feature off so even if one is issued if you have it off you won't even get an alert. I know on my phone I had it on and one went off and scared the living daylights out of me. Mine sounded like the Tornado Alerts you hear on the radio. I mean I took time to read it but that's it.

I think a lot of people just can't be assed about it now a days and just ignore it. I bet they wouldn't if it was their family though.

 

[Esper]

Aren't a good number of child abductions committed by parents and/or family members? Wait, let me google that quickly.

• Nearly 90% of missing children have simply misunderstood directions or miscommunicated their plans, are lost, or have run away.
• 9% are kidnapped by a family member in a custody dispute.
• 3% are abducted by non-family members, usually during the commission of a crime such as robbery or sexual assault. The kidnapper is often someone the child knows.
• Only about 100 children (a fraction of 1%) are kidnapped each year in the stereotypical stranger abductions you hear about in the news.
• About half of these 100 children come home.

• 84 percent endangered runaways.
• 12 percent family abductions.
• 2 percent lost, injured or otherwise missing children.
• 1 percent nonfamily abductions.
• 1 percent critically missing young adults, ages 18 to 20.

FBI's National Crime Information Center gets about half a million instances of missing children each year. So it looks like most kids aren't abducted and among those who are it's usually family and/or someone the child knows. If that's the case then I wonder if amber alerts will help most abductors because they'll most likely already be known to be the abductors, or at least highly suspect. That means they'll have descriptions and license plate numbers and things like that. If I remember from the last time I saw an amber alter it was given on an electronic billboard on the highway because the abduction happened in my general area. It told the car model and plate number so in that case I think it was definitely a positive thing to put out there in case someone saw the car. I mean, yeah, I suppose the abductor could have been aware that his info was out there, but I think most are going to assume that's the case regardless and it won't change their behavior.

This is assuming that the missing child is considered worth calling an amber alert for. As cold as it sounds, sometimes no one cares about the kid who goes missing.