The AMBER Alert, established in 1996 after 9-year-old Amber Hagerman was abducted and murdered in Arlington, Texas, is the primary alert system for child abduction cases. In 2013, about 21 percent of children were successfully recovered due to the AMBER Alert, according to a report by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. Despite these success stories, there are major problems with the alert system that need to be considered, Griffin said.
AMBER stands for “America’s Missing: Broadcast Emergency Response.” The alert system was designed to help save the lives of children like Amber. However, a 2010 study of the AMBER Alert found the claim that the system is “saving lives” to be misleading. The study took a sample of 448 AMBER Alert cases and analyzed whether the ones where children were recovered suggested a “lifesaving” rescue.
The researchers found that, although in over 25 percent of cases studied the AMBER Alert aided in the recovery of an the abducted child, there was little evidence that AMBER Alerts “save lives” as the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children says it does, Griffin said.
“In the vast majority of the AMBER Alert success cases, there really wasn’t any life threatening peril as proven by the fact that these hundreds of very similar cases where the AMBER Alert had no effect also ended up just fine for the kid,” said Griffin, the lead author of the study.
In AMBER Alert cases where there is a rescue, the abductor is usually a family member who is not planning on hurting the child, said Griffin, who has reviewed more than 1,000 AMBER Alert cases. The AMBER Alert system does not seem to protect against abductors who are actually out to harm the child, he said.
