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research paper about the effectiveness of the amber alert system....

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Running Head: AMBER Alert System

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Is the AMBER Alert System a Reliable Way to Save Abducted Children?

Bailee Hackley Briar Cliff University May 6, 2019 Professional Development in Psychology, PSYC 211-01

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Is the AMBER Alert System a Reliable Way to Rescue Abducted Children?

Introduction The AMBER Alert System is designed to send out emergency messages across many platforms such as TV’s, road signs, cell phones, radios, etc. when a law enforcement agency becomes aware of a missing/abducted child that is in impending danger. It alerts the surrounding community(s) for help in finding this child by providing description of the child and his or her abductor along with the kind of vehicle. The AMBER Alert came originally from Texas in 1996 after a nine-year-old girl named Amber Hagerman was abducted while riding her bike in Arlington and was later brutally murdered. Soon after Texas created the AMBER Alert many other states adopted the same ideas. Then not long after that, in 2003, the government started putting funding aside for a national network of the states that had already started their AMBER programs. (Griffin, 2007). Every year The Department of Justice spends $5 million to go towards the PROTECT Act that supports the AMBER Alert System. The idea of the AMBER Alert System is to get information out to communities as soon as possible to get everyone is help in finding these children before they are killed. A study in 2006 on child abduction in the state of Washington by the Criminal Division of the Washington State Attorney General’s Office states that one of their key findings is that in about 76 percent of their missing children homicide cases, the child was dead within three hour of being taken. About 86 percent of these missing children homicide cases the child was dead within the first 24 hours of being taken. AMBER Alerts were created for serious cases only, the “stereotypical” abduction cases that are done by strangers. In a 2004 study by a group of researchers who wanted to test the effectiveness of the alert system, out of 233 AMBER Alerts set out 50 percent of these abductions were by family members, 20

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percent were from false reports, and only 30 percent of these reports were on actual stranger abduction cases (Hargrove, 2005). Missing children reports are something that should be considered important and urgent but looking at the statistics odds are the child was taken by a relative and are not going to be harmed. The intended use of the AMBER Alert was for cases much more serious than a family abduction. Which leads me into my reasons for if the AMBER Alert System is even a reliable way to find these missing children before the worst possible scenario, Statistics of the effectiveness of the AMBER Alert, the overuse of the AMBER Alert for nonserious cases, eyewitness memory research, the bystander effect, effects on the perpetrators, cases that the AMBER Alert has worked well, and how the AMBER Alert system could be improved. Synthesis of Previous Research In the rest of this research paper I will discuss first, Statistics of the effectiveness of the AMBER Alert, second, the overuse of the AMBER Alert System, third, how eyewitness memory research fits into the effectiveness of the AMBER Alert, fourth, how the bystander effect plays a role in the effectiveness, fifth, the effects the alerts have on the perpetrator, sixth, I’ll discuss the good things about the AMBER Alert and cases where is could’ve or did save lives, and finally, how the AMBER Alert System could be improved. Statistics on Effectiveness of the AMBER Alert To begin the rest of the research I wanted to discuss all the statistics on the effectiveness of the AMBER Alerts. All this information is being pulled from an analysis of AMBER Alert cases from 2006 through 2018 provided by the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children on the AMBER Alert cite. I will only be providing data starting from 2006 and every three years after that until 2018, but if a particular year sands out the most I will point it out.

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Starting in 2006, there was a total of 261 AMBER Alert cases reported. Of these 261 cases there was 69 children involved in 53 cases that were successfully recovered. Now that is great that we recovered those children but that is only 20.3% of cases that were recovered and 21.8% of children in those cases were recovered. That leads me to wonder whether the system they are using is working. But also looking at those 261 cases, which consisted of 316 children, only 9 of those children were recovered deceased which is 2.8%. Next in 2009, there were 207 cases of 263 children who were issued an AMBER Alert. Of these 207 cases, 45 of those were recovery successfully, 21.7%. Of the 263 children, 59 were successfully recovered, 22.4%. Of the 207 cases, 8 cases resulted in deceased children, 3.8%. Of 263 children, 9 were deceased, 3.4%. Next in 2012, there were 167 cases involving 204 children. Of the 167 cases there were 52 cases that were successfully recovered, 14.9%. Of the 204 children involved, 68 children were recovered successfully, 33.3%. Of the 167 cases, there were 9 cases of deceased children, 5.3%. Of the 204 children, 9 were deceased, 4.4%. Next on to 2015, there was 182 AMBER Alerts issued with 224 children involved. Of the 182 issued alerts there was 50 alerts that were successfully recovered, 27.4%. Of the 224 children, there were 58 children who were successfully recovered, 25.8%. Of the 182 alerts there were 8 cases declared deceased, 4.3%. Of the 224 children missing, 8 were found deceased, 3.5%. Finally, on to the last area of data, 2018, there were 161 cases with 203 children issued an AMBER Alert. Of the 161 cases, there were 28 cases were successfully recovered, 17.3%. Of the 203 children there were 34 children recovered successfully, 16.7%. Of the 161 cases there were 7 cases of children found deceased, 4.3%. Of the 203 children there were 7 children deceased, 3.4%. Every year of statistics is about the same amount and averages of children missing, successfully recovered, or deceased. Overuse of the AMBER Alert

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There are many ways this system could be overused, such as by relative abductions, false reports, and bad timing alerts sent out. In a research article by Denise-Mary Ordway she did some research on child abductions and family abductions from previous research and found that in 2017, 43 percent of abductions were reported to the police and of that 43 percent 86 percent of those were relative kidnappings (Ordway 2017). It is exceedingly rare that a child is abducted by a relative and killed or hurt. The most common relative to abduct children in their family is their own children from another parent. Parents kidnap their child from the other parent typically for revenge on the other parent (Polly Klaas Foundation, 2004). Studies have shown that only about 14 percent of child abductions by parents or relatives ends with the child being killed (Criminal Division of the Washington State Attorney General’s Office, 2006). Another way the AMBER Alert system is overused is in false reports. There really is not much on why people decide to create false AMBER Alerts other than maybe they just want attention. I have come across a couple of stories about false abductions with false AMBER Alerts. One being about a North Carolina woman who falsely reported her “son” had been abducted from a flea market in 2008 when she was not the mother and the boy was safe with a relative. Another story being about a man from Tulsa, Oklahoma where he claimed his 6-year-old-daughter was abducted in his truck when his truck was stolen so law enforcement would issue a state wide AMBER Alert to try and find his truck faster. He later admitted to lying about his daughter being in the truck. Another thing that people believe is an overuse or misuse way of the AMBER Alert is when they choose to issue an alert in the middle of the night when no one is awake or able to provide any kind of help. an example would be when New Jersey issued an AMBER Alert at 1:38 in the morning. The people of New Jersey were upset because they did not see the point or effectiveness of issuing the alert at that time (Cohen, n.a.). By issuing a whole bunch of unnecessary AMBER

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Alert it can create the idea of “AMBER Fatigue”. “AMBER Fatigue” is the phenomenon that if seen too many AMBER Alerts people will stop paying attention to them. Excessive AMBER Alerts could also instill a large amount of fear in the public (Cutler, 2008). Eyewitness Memory Research Eyewitness memory plays a huge roll in the effectiveness of the AMBER Alert. The AMBER Alert provides a description of the child along with what he or she was wearing at the time they were taken and a description of the car the were taken in if there was a car involved. But what are the odds of someone remembering these things the entire time until the child is found? Most likely the only people who would be actively searching would be relatives, close friends, and the police therefore they would be able to remember the descriptions. Someone outside this circle of people probably are not going to remember these descriptions because they will be going about their days as usual because they must. In a video about eyewitness testimony on YouTube by the APA’s CEO Dr. Norman B. Anderson, PhD, he talks about how reliable these eyewitnesses are. Because these are not exceptionally reliable research has shown that witness identifications are wrong 33 percent of the time (Anderson, 2012). There is an exceptionally good chance that someone could come across the perpetrator and not even realize it or come across someone who they believe is the perpetrator and call in a false identification to the authorities. Another issue with identifying the perpetrator is that people typically are less accurate on identifying the perpetrator who are a different race than theirs (Anderson, 2012). Some of the ways the AMBER Alerts are released could also question the reliability because they play a role in one’s memory. An example would be the road signs they use as a way. When people are driving what are the odds that they are going to one, be able to read all of the descriptions while driving as fast as they are, and two, most people aren’t going to remember

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these things while they are busy. Not only do people have issues with identifying the perpetrator id they are a different race, but overall people have a hard time identifying another person’s faces they have never seen before (Cutler, 2008). To go along with eyewitness testimony, a study conducted by Fredric Bartlett, which is now knows as Bartlett’s theory of reconstructive memory, talks about how unreliable someone’s memory can be. He talks about schemas, mental units of knowledge that correspond to frequently encountered people, objects or situations (McLeod, 2018), that are able to distort unfamiliar information someone receives to be able to fit it in our existing knowledge. Because people process and store new information in ways that make sense to them that is how we fit all these into schemas (McLeod, 2018). An example to make more sense of all this would be, a child being abducted in a neighborhood by a stranger. There are other people in the area that witness these things or the family that witness this happening. They become stressed and scared and they all process what they saw a different way. Who will have the testimony that will be most accurate? If a false testimony is used on an AMBER Alert, then people will be looking for something that is inaccurate therefore finding the child could be even more difficult. The Bystander Effect The bystander effect is seen everywhere in society ranging from children to adults every single day. The bystander effect is when there is a situation emergency or nonemergency that prevents one person from helping because no one else is helping. An example would be, a child is being bullied by another kid and everyone is watching buy no one is stepping in and helping the kid being bullied because they think someone else will do it especially because there is a lot of people watching the situation. In the situation of an AMBER Alert, being a bystander is extremely easy. Practically everyone is a bystander in this case, because everyone in the

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community or state will receive the AMBER Alert but how many people are helping? Another situation can occur when the child is being taken what are the odds of someone stepping in to help the child? Unfortunately, there is not a whole lot of research done on AMBER Alerts with the bystander effect, but it is something that should be considered more. The Effect of AMBER Alerts on Perpetrators Another huge idea to consider with the AMBER Alerts is what kind of effect it has on the perpetrator. I believe this is one of the biggest if not the biggest issue that should be considered about the AMBER Alert considering the severity it could have on the abducted child. There could be pros and cons about sending AMBER Alerts out for the perpetrator to see. The biggest pro to this situation would be that the child is returned safely because it could encourage the perpetrator to do so. It could also deter other criminals from even committing this crime because of the alerts (Cutler, 2008). Unfortunately, there are also detrimental consequences that could occur due to these alerts. The worst possible scenario would be that a child ends up dead from being abducted. What if they AMBER Alerts could play a huge part in that? Seeing the alert could urge the perpetrator to kill the child sooner than they had planned because they know there are a lot of people now on the lookout. Another con about sending out these alerts is that they can act as an educational tool. When the alert is sent out containing the description of the car with the license plate the perpetrator is now aware that people are watching for his or her car and can use this information to their advantage. They can now get a different car with different license plates to avoid being caught so now we have no idea what car they are driving because everyone was looking for the original car in the alert (Miller, 2009). Good Things About AMBER Alert

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Not everything about the AMBER Alerts are bad, there are many ways that are beneficial to helping save children. Going back to the statistics provided, there weren’t that many deaths out of all the children and cases provided and there were many cases where children were recovered successfully so there are clear signs that to some extent that this system works. Having the alert sent out can also ease a little bit of the panic for the loved ones that are looking for their child because they know the authorities are trying to do something about it rather than just letting it go. I wanted to add in some stories of children who were saved from the AMBER Alert system. Reading through a lot of these stories it’s all by coincidence that these children are saved, they just happen to get the AMBER Alert and they are there at the right time or come across the child and the perpetrator at the right time. It is hardly ever about someone going out and tracking down the child as soon as they get the alert. The first story is about a two-year-old child named Ronnie Tran, who was kidnapped by his 65-year-old grandmother who had attacked his mother and restrained her. She then left the child with a family friend and asked him to babysit the child not realizing that he was babysitting a missing child. John Tuong, the man babysitting the boy, realized the child was kidnapped when he got an AMBER Alert described the kid and immediately called the authorities. The child made it home safe with the mother (Porter, 2015). The next story is about a six-year-old girl named Khloe who was taken from her bed in the middle of the night by a family friend. She was taken on February 21, 2015 and was luckily found and returned home the next day all thanks to a gas station employee. The gas station clerk had recognized Khloe from the AMBER Alert sent out about her and immediately contacted the authorities claiming he had seen the girl and the perpetrator along with the van he was driving. With the tip from the clerk the authorities were able to narrow down the suspect and track down the van (Porter, 2015). The final story is about a brother and a sister who were taken

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by their father on May 20, 2013. They were saved by a truck driver who had received the AMBER Alert and while driving he came across the truck the suspect was driving and calls it in. The police stop the vehicle and finds the children inside under pillows and blankets safe (Fantz, 2013). Further Research and Room for Improvement There should be further research on the effectiveness on the AMBER Alert. Even though there is proof that to some extend it does work but there could be possibilities to improve it even further and make those number of children successfully recovered even greater and decreasing the number of children found deceased. The first way it could be improved is going back to the section about the overuse of the AMBER Alert. By minimizing how often we use the system it should grab people’s attention more when an alert does go out. Although anytime a child goes missing it is a big deal but like stated previously the design of this alert was meant for stranger abductions, therefore, it should be narrowed down to stranger abductions unless a different abduction presents itself as a dangerous case where the relative or friend is going to hurt the child. The second way it could be improved is by sending these alerts to areas people are most likely to see the child and the perpetrator and to those who are most likely to report the whereabouts. To do this kind of thing it would require further research on who is most likely to report (Miller, 2009). This kind of research should also focus on ideas like the bystander effect and why people do not report these things when the child is seen, or the perpetrator is seen. A huge example I can think of that has a lot to do about this situation would be when a girl named Jaycee Dugard went missing for 18 years. On several occasions she could’ve been found and return to her family if people would have reported their concerns or the police would’ve done a further investigation on the perpetrators property when they were sent there to take a look at it.

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The third and final way it could be improved goes back to how the alerts are presented to individuals. All this relies on an individual’s memory. There should be more research done to determine when the best time is to send out an AMBER Alert during the day when there would be more people available and when they would be more likely to retain the information they are being presented. The odds of someone remembering the description of the child and the vehicle of the perpetrator are very slim if someone is busy such as driving or working. Conclusion The AMBER Alert system is a decent way to getting information out to help find missing children. Discrediting the whole system would be unnecessary because there is some proof showing it does work, to an extent. I am sure there are many families who are grateful and thankful for the AMBER Alert system helping find their child along with the people involved in helping. But there is further research that should be conducted and better ideas that should be implemented to the AMBER Alert system to make the system more productive and suitable to finding more of these children that are missing, finding them faster, and finding them unharmed.

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American Psychological Association. (2012, October 4). “This Is Ps...