Police Involvement in Family Abduction Episodes

• NCJ Number: 167554
• Author(s): P S Plass; G T Hotaling; D Finkelhor
• Date Published: 1993
• Length: 40 pages
• Contract Number(s): 92-MC-CX-0017
• Sponsoring Agency: Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP)
• Sale Source: National Institute of Justice/NCJRS; NCJRS Photocopy Services
• Publication Type: Report (Study/Research)
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

This study examined the frequency of citizen reporting of a family member's kidnapping of a child from the custodial parent and citizen satisfaction with police response.

Abstract

Two definitions of family abduction were used in this study: situations in which a family member took a child in violation of a custody agreement or decree; or situations in which a family member (in violation of a custody agreement or decree) failed to return a child at the end of a legal or agreed-upon visitation period, with the child being away at least one additional night in these cases. The National Incidence Studies of Missing, Abducted, Runaway and Thrownaway Children (NISMART) used a household telephone survey to obtain national data on the yearly incidence of various missing child events, including those defined in this study as family abductions. The survey consisted of telephone interviews with caretakers in 10,367 randomly selected households who reported on the experiences of 20,505 children aged 17 years or younger. NISMART identified 142 broad scope family abduction episodes that involved children from 104 families. Police were contacted in approximately 40 percent of these cases, which involved 55 children from 37 families. The findings show that the characteristics of an event were more important in determining whether a crime was reported to police than were demographic characteristics of the victims. Cases in which the police were contacted were more likely to involve the actual taking of a child, attempts to conceal the child, or those in which the custodial parent does not know the whereabouts of the child. Given the seriousness of the family abduction episodes for which the police were called, it is not surprising that parents were more satisfied with police response when their pain was taken seriously. Further, the data tend to show that contacting the police increased the risk for harm to children victimized by family abductions. This is an important public policy issue that deserves more research scrutiny than is available in the NISMART data. 19 references and 7 tables