Questioning the Amber Alert

You may hear it said that anyone who questions something purported to save children's lives must be in league with whatever band of miscreants don't want children's lives to be saved. But what is a child's life worth to the people who make this broad leap of irrational zeal? Is a child's life a bargaining line against societal betterment? Are children now our excuse for apathy, for maintaining the status quo in a broken system? Does fixing the system's faults mean one is against saving children, and if such is the case, what does that make those who ignore the system's faults? Irrationality over children is the hideous beast that holds children captive if only to make sure no one else gets to set them free first, and it needs to die of a thousand cuts. Here's one cut we can make.

Let's consider Amber Alerts for a moment. Many may be tempted to think that such a dramatic, news-friendly theater narrative system recovers 12 children a day and costs nothing to implement--that its benefits outweigh any possible drawback to such an extent that it's not even worth investigating alternative methods for recovering children from abductions. In reality though, according to their own report for 2009 (the most recent one), out of 207 cases (269 children) nationwide, 45 (59 children) were recovered contingent upon the Amber alert having been posted, at a cost of 25 million dollars per state in federal money (from taxpayers) to pay for implementing the service. The average caseload per state (including three US territories), was about four, an average of one child per state and territory was recovered. So in effect, based on averages, 25 million dollars was spent to rescue about one child in your state in 2009. (Michigan had the highest at 27, but a majority of states had 0 or 1 cases).

The money seems insubstantial though, because if it helped save even one child's life, then it surely must be money well spent? A child's life, a human life, is certainly worth more than any dollar amount. But despite what any politician may say, the money that goes in to setting up the Amber Alert system does not "save children's lives." The Bill itself does not "save children's lives," it simply allocates money for states to set up Amber Alert systems. That 25 million pays for the infrastructure and technology needed to broadcast the Amber alerts--mainly, glowing highway signs, command posts, and emergency alert systems for television and radio. But why should this matter if all that equipment is being used in the service of spreading awareness about children being abducted?

In reality, the effect of these gadgets and special announcements on the police and investigators solving their cases, is minimal. That was the finding in the first independent study on the effectiveness of Amber alerts at the University of Nevada, carried out by a team lead by criminologist Timothy Griffin. Hundreds of abduction cases between 2003 and 2009 were studied, and the finding was that Amber Alerts played little to no role in the recovery of children, despite their glowing reputation in the mainstream media. It was found that the majority of cases deemed successes by the Amber Alert system during those six years were children involved in custody fights between parents where the child was not at risk. In the minority of cases where kidnappers were the perpetrators, Amber Alerts usually failed to save their lives. It would appear that murderous kidnappers are not swayed to spare the child's life when the kid's face and name is plastered on every screen in the county.

Essentially, the Amber Alerts generally help police and investigators recover children from lower risk situations where the child's life is not at least immediately in jeopardy. "The fact is that once someone abducts a child with a murderous intent," Griffin said, "there's really not that much we can do about it."  In 2009, nine children were recovered already deceased, and none were found to be a result of an outside the family kidnapping: 4 children died at the hands of relatives, 5 children died from unknown circumstances. While the Amber Alerts certainly do have the potential to be life saving, to make the assumption that every Amber Alert saves a life, or that Amber Alerts are a life saving operation like the ER, is a gross exaggeration.

One may also contend that Amber alerts in 2009 saved the lives of children at the hands of murderous rapists, kidnappers, and strangers. This is the image glorified in the media, after all. In actuality, of the 170 cases in which the abductor had been identified in 2009, 139 of them were in known relationships with the child, making only 31 cases nationwide where the child had been abducted by some rogue kidnapper. Of those 139 cases, 109 of those known relationships were familial ones. Imagine that, family members are the greatest threat to our nation's children, with 64 being the child's father, and 34 being the child's mother. This means that the number of child abductions in which the offender was the child's own parents vastly outnumbers cases where children were abducted by the rogue slugs that make for such an endearing news hour.

However, none of this is meant to suggest that Amber Alerts be done away with. In fact, one promising thing about Amber Alerts, if not because of the number of children they save, is the speed at which recoveries are made following activation of an alert. Many children with activated alerts on them were recovered within three hours of the alert being posted. In fact, 35 of the 59 children recovered in 2009 were rescued within three hours of the alert being posted, mainly because officers were able to identify the abductor's vehicle as described in the alert. This is encouraging, but once again, when most of the abductors are related to the child, information about the child's parents' vehicle is already determined. While the number of Amber Alerts issued has declined over time, the number of abductions has remained fairly consistent.

How necessary is this measure? One could say society is better off with Amber Alerts than it would be if no such method of alert existed for the recovery of abducted children. But how effective is the measure? Is its efficiency so great that it can not even be questioned--so great that all who criticize it can only be among those "against saving children's lives?" This is hardly an over-statement. I'm more than confident that, seeing how few children are actually recovered (even given that perhaps the numbers have changed since 2009), this is a costly apparatus that could probably be scaled back to something a bit more representative of its effectiveness. All that is made by human endeavor should be questioned, because regardless of whether Amber Alerts ever saved a child's life, ignorance to reality never has.