This publication is the FY 2023 report of the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System (NamUs).
In this document, the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System (NamUs) provides its annual report for the 2023 fiscal year. NamUS is the nation’s only centralized federal program that provides forensic, investigative, and analytical services to resolve long-term missing and unidentified decedent cases. NamUs provides a unified and secure database for missing, unidentified, and unclaimed persons records, allowing for searching, cross-matching, and sharing of case records. NamUs’s mission is to identify unknown human decedent cases and resolve missing and unclaimed person cases by providing technology, forensic services, and investigative support to criminal justice agencies. In 2003, the National Institute of Justice (NIJ) began funding major efforts to maximize the use of DNA technology in the criminal justice system, including in the investigation of missing and unidentified person cases. By 2005, NIJ expanded its efforts with the “Identifying the Missing Summit,” where criminal justice practitioners, forensic scientists, policymakers, and victim advocates defined major challenges in investigating and solving missing and unidentified decedent cases. As a result of that summit, the Deputy Attorney General created the National Missing Persons Task Force, which identified the need to improve access to information that would help solve missing and unidentified person cases. NamUs supports all long-term missing and unidentified human remains case investigations for juveniles and adults and provides a repository of these cases for professional users, families of missing loved ones, and the public.