NCJ Number
161368
Date Published
1990
Length
14 pages
Annotation
Based on the findings of a federally sponsored study, this paper addresses the incidence and nature of several forms of child victimization in the United States.
Abstract
The forms of child victimization discussed are missing children; family abduction; nonfamily abduction; runaway and thrownaway children; and lost, injured, or otherwise missing children. Data sources for the study were a household survey, a juvenile facilities survey, a returned runaway study, a police records study, FBI data reanalysis, and a community professionals study. The household survey was the most extensive of the NISMART studies and involved a telephone survey of 34,822 randomly selected households. For each of the categories of child victimization, this report provides data on the incidence and nature of the offense. Policy implications are drawn from the findings. NISMART recommends that family abductions be at the top of the priority list for increased action. This is based on its incidence (three times larger than previous estimates and the most numerous of all the categories studied) and its rapid increase. Countermeasures also have a high potential for success, since the perpetrators (parents in 80 percent of the cases) are accessible through the social service-legal system that regulates custody issues; deterrence approaches should help in situations where negotiation is not a possibility. Other recommendations are offered for nonfamily abductions; runaways; thrownaways; and lost, injured, and otherwise missing children.