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Amber Alert Essay

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According to the United States Department of Justice every forty seconds a child is being abducted. This works out to be about 2,000 abductions per day and 800,000 abductions per year. This would be 11.4 children per every 1,000 children being abducted. Seventy-five percent of abductions are committed by males. Sixty-seven percent of these perpetrators are under the age of twenty-nine. Seventy-four percent of children abducted are girls. Seventy-one percent of the kidnappers are strangers to the victims. Eighty percent of abductions occur within a quarter of a mile from where the child lives. Less than sixty of the children are returned to their families alive. Four percent of the children abducted are never found. Seventy-four …show more content…

AMBER Alerts are issued after law enforcement determines that there has been abduction. Law enforcement must believe that the missing child is in danger of harm. An Alert can only be issued by law enforcement. Abductions by strangers are the most dangerous and are the primary mission of the Alert. AMBER Alerts are issued for children under the age of seventeen. Each state has its own age limits, but the majority uses seventeen as the cut off. Descriptive information is given of the missing child, the abductor, and the abductor’s vehicle used in the abduction. The missing child’s name is placed into the National Crisis Information Center (NCIC) system. Not only is the AMBER Alert named after Amber Hagerman, but AMBER also stands for America’s Missing Broadcast Emergency Response (Child Abduction, AMBER Alert, and Crime Control Theater). About 250 to 300 AMBER Alerts are issued each year. To keep up with changing times AMBER Alerts are moving into the Web network. To be effective, more people need to be reached, and to do this the Internet is needed. The old system when it was activated could take up to an hour for all sources to be reached. In abduction, a rapid response can be crucial. With the new system, partly financed by Hewlett-Packard and other technical companies, one key password can send messages immediately. About thirteen states use this as part of their Alert system. Law enforcement enters

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