Estimates of the Incidence and Seriousness of the Disappearance Problem
In an effort to try to resolve the maximalist– minimalist debate, the Department of Justice, as mandated by the 1984 Missing Children’s Assis- tance Act, funded a five-year National Incidence Study of Missing, Abducted, Runaway, and Throwaway Children (NISMART). Researchers collected data in several ways: by conducting a tele- phone survey of nearly 35,000 randomly selected households, by analyzing FBI homicide records
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and the case files about nonfamily abductions in 83 law enforcement agencies in 21 randomly selected counties across the nation, and by interviewing run- aways and the professionals who dealt with them in social service agencies and juvenile facilities. The social scientists clarified definitions, consulted with experts, and generated numbers that led them to the conclusion that the term missing children caused endless confusion by mixing five distinct problems that had very different victims, causes, dynamics, and remedies.
The first was the worst-case scenario that fit the stereotype of a kidnapping by a stranger with evil intentions. Thankfully, it turned out to be a rare occurrence. The second type, family abductions, was found to be a much bigger problem than policy makers had realized. Many missing children turned out to be runaways, which was the third type. But some of these homeless youngsters had actually been “cast out,” and therefore throwaways consti- tuted the fourth type of missing child. The fifth and final category were children who were missing because they got lost, were injured and couldn’t reach their parents, or innocently failed to tell their caretakers where they were going and when they would return home. The report’s findings indicated that adherents of the maximalist position were overestimating the real scope of the stranger danger threat to young people, and that those who took the minimalist approach were underestimating its true dimensions (Finkelhor, Hotaling, and Sedlak, 1990).
A follow-up NISMART study was carried out 10 years later but used different data collection methods. The pool of cases of missing children was assembled by a national telephone survey of adult caretakers in about 16,000 households and a mail survey of law enforcement agencies serving 400 counties throughout the nation. In addition, 74 juvenile facilities were contacted to find out how many of the youngsters in their care had run away during 1997. By combining the statistics gath- ered from these three sources, the researchers were able to address the question of what happened to missing children during the late 1990s and how many really were crime victims. The findings of
NISMART–1 and NISMART–2 are summarized in Box 8.2.
Although the two comprehensive NISMART studies shed much-needed light on many emotion- ally charged issues, several other key questions were answered by an intensive study of police depart- ment records for 1984 in Houston, Texas, and Jacksonville, Florida: What kinds of children are typically the targets of nonfamily abductions? Are they lured away or captured by force? When and where are they approached, and where are they taken? How long are they held? What additional crimes are committed against them?
According to the researchers who analyzed more than 200 cases reported to the police in those two cities that year, girls are targeted much more often (in 88 percent of the cases) than boys (although many young males may not tell their parents about the abduction and subsequent molestation, and their parents may not report the incidents to the police). The typical captive was between 11 and 14 years old. A little more than half (57 percent) of the youngsters were forced to go with their captors (perhaps intimidated by the sight of a weapon or physically overpowered); the remainder were lured or tricked into accompa- nying their abductors. Most of the victims were taken to secluded spots, either indoors (empty apartments, garages) or outdoors (woods, fields), but a sizable number were kept in a vehicle. Nearly all (98 percent) were released within 24 hours. In the majority of the cases (72 percent), the abductor molested the child; in most of the remaining cases (22 percent), the child escaped unharmed from an attempted kidnapping. About 4 percent were simply held and let go and, tragi- cally, 2 percent were murdered after being sexu- ally assaulted. The researchers discovered that only 15 percent of the cases involving an abduction were primarily classified by the police as a kidnap- ping. Most of the cases were filed under the head- ing of sexual assault and consequently were classified that way in the UCR (NCMEC, 1986).
Other research that zeroed in on kidnappings of children under 18 that resulted in homicides yielded an estimate of about 100 stranger killings a year
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(about 0.5 percent of murders nationwide in the mid-1990s). More than 7 of every 10 victims were white girls. Their average age was 11. The typical assailant was a single white man about 27 years old, often with a history of past sexual assaults and abduc- tions. Roughly three-fifths of the abductions were characterized as crimes of opportunity by strangers; the rest were carried out by friends or acquaintances of the youngster’s family. About 7 out of 10 had
been sexually assaulted or raped before they were slain. Almost half of the youth had been dispatched within the first hour, and almost three-quarters had been murdered within four hours, according to an analysis of 562 child killings carried out in 44 states between the late 1970s and the mid-1990s (“Study Puts Facts,” 1997).
Since the two NISMART studies and the others cited above were carried out during time