In Focus: Missing Children

For parents, the safety and welfare of their children is paramount. When a child is missing, families are traumatized yet face the challenge of organizing every available resource to find their child.

Regardless of the reason why a child is missing, timing is crucial. A rapid response from the community and law enforcement significantly increases the chance of resolving a case successfully.

For more than 30 years, the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) has partnered with the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, providing support to achieve the center's mission. Additionally, for more than 20 years, the AMBER Alert System has been helping families find their missing children with alerts broadcasted to the community through various platforms.

National Missing Children's Day, May 25, is a time to show appreciation for those who work to find and safely bring home children who may be missing, and it also serves as an annual reminder to the nation to continue efforts aimed at reuniting missing children with their families.

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Resources

America's Missing: Broadcast Emergency Response (AMBER) Alert
The AMBER Alert program is a voluntary partnership between law enforcement agencies, broadcasters, transportation agencies, and the wireless industry, to activate an urgent bulletin in the most serious child abduction cases.

National Missing Children's Day
This section of the OJJDP website provides the history of National Missing Children's Day, details about the 2020 award recipient, information about the poster contest, and more.

National Missing and Unidentified Persons System (NamUs)
Administered by the National Institute of Justice, NamUs is the first national online repository for missing records and unidentified decedent cases.

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