Kidnapping

Although kidnapping knows no age boundaries, those most vulnerable to becoming victims are children. In 1932, a sensational kidnapping case captured national attention when the twenty-month-old son of the famed aviator Charles A. Lindbergh was abducted from his home. Although the family paid a ransom of fifty thousand dollars and cooperated with their son’s unknown kidnappers, the baby was eventually found in a shallow grave near his home. He had apparently been murdered and buried the same night he was abducted. More than three years later, a German immigrant named Bruno Hauptmann was arrested for the crime; he was convicted and executed.

The Lindbergh case provided the impetus for Congress to make kidnapping a federal crime in 1934 with its passage of what became known as the Lindbergh law . That federal statute authorized severe punishments for all convicted kidnappers who transport their victims across state or national borders.

Kidnapping offenses pose unique challenges for the criminal justice system. One of these challenges is a general lack of awareness and understanding about the true magnitude and nature of the problem. Public debate on the subject has been confused by public hysteria, inaccurate statistics, and misinformation about the characteristics of primary offenders and the types of children who are most at risk.

The Nature of Kidnapping Crimes

Multiple disparities in definitions of kidnapping have clouded the reliability and validity of the statistics associated with the crime. In the public mind, based on individual perceptions and media portrayals, kidnapping is a crime that includes lengthy or permanent removals of children from homes for reasons such as ransom, sexual assault, and murder. However, those types of crime do not occur nearly as frequently as they are portrayed in the media.

In an effort to clear up confusion over the term “kidnapping,” the U.S. Department of Justice issued its first National Incidence Study of Missing, Abducted, Runaway, and Thrownaway Children in 1990. This study describes three basic types of abduction: nonfamily abduction, stereotypical abduction, and family abduction. The researchers defined nonfamily abductions to include abductions by friends, acquaintances, and strangers. Most children taken under this form of abduction are missing for only about one hour.

Stereotypical kidnapping is nonfamily abduction committed by acquaintances or strangers, who keep the abducted children overnight and take them a minimum of fifty miles away from their homes. Most such abductors kidnap children with the intent of permanently removing or killing them.

Family abduction generally occurs when relatives of the abducted children, or persons acting on their behalf, remove the children for the purpose of concealing them or taking them out of state. Such cases usually involve violations of parental custody orders with the intent of depriving the children’s legal caretakers of their custodial rights, either permanently or for extended periods of time.

Internationally, stereotypical kidnappers have included terrorists and gang members, while victims have included tourists, journalists, schoolchildren, and wealthy individuals. Another form of international kidnapping is a type of family abduction called international parental child abduction (IPCA), when a parent abducts or retains a child by crossing international borders.

Prevalence

Confusion over the prevalence of child kidnapping has been exacerbated by the publicizing of unsubstantiated statistics to promote awareness of the problem of child abduction. When the missing children’s movement first began to attract public attention during the mid-1980s, figures as high as 50,000 abductions per year in the United States were initially reported. Professional researchers, however, countered that such statistics were greatly overstated and that more accurate figures were between 70 and 600 abductions per year. Nevertheless, since Congress’s passing of the Missing Children’s Act of 1982, the numbers of missing persons reported to police have tended to rise annually.

The National Incidence Study of Missing, Abducted, Runaway, and Thrownaway Children, or NISMART, which was initiated by the Department of Justice, marked a preliminary effort to accurately measure the scope of child abduction. NISMART blended several sources of data, such as telephone surveys, analyses of law-enforcement records, and homicide data to generate more accurate figures of both actual and attempted abductions throughout the country. The 1990 report indicated that more than 800,000 children were reported missing annually—a figure that equates to more than 2,000 missing person reports daily. Of those, more than 58,000 children were abducted by nonfamily members. Serious long-term stranger abductions accounted for more than 100 children, of whom 40 percent were killed. The staggering figure that emerged from the NISMART findings was that, while activists estimated the number of family abductions was relatively low in comparison to nonfamily abductions, the study found that more than 200,000 children were victims of family abductions.

Another source for estimates on the rate of possible kidnappings in the United States—one that does not does not apply to just children—is the National Crime Information Center (NCIC), a database maintained by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The NCIC does not record statistics on kidnapping per se, but does record them on missing persons, of which there were 546,568 cases recorded in 2022. Missing persons cases are broken down into five categories: juvenile, endangered, involuntary, disability, and catastrophe. The "involuntary" category is defined as applying to "a person of any age who is missing under circumstances indicating that the disappearance may not have been voluntary, i.e., abduction or kidnapping." In 2022, there were 11,884 involuntary missing persons cases.

International kidnapping statistics can be hard to track accurately and consistently due to variations in record keeping across jurisdictions. Control Risks, a global specialist risk consultancy, noted that global kidnapping rates rose between 2019 and 2022 and attributed the rise to the COVID-19 pandemic exacerbating socioeconomic disparities, under-resourced law enforcement agencies, and weak judiciaries, all factors driving international rates. The consultancy reported that in 2021, kidnapping environments differed across regions, with 37 percent of global kidnappings occurring in sub-Saharan African that year, 32 percent in the Americas, 21 percent in the Asia Pacific region, 9 percent in the Middle East and North Africa, and 1 percent in Europe and Russia. According to Statista, 4,508 people were kidnapped as a result of terrorism in 2022.

Characteristics and Correlates of Kidnapping

Correlates of child kidnapping are complex to identify. Apparent discrepancies in statistical data that have been collected may stem from subjective interpretations of what constitutes family abduction on the part of parents participating in the survey. What some parents may consider to be abduction, others may consider to be exercises of their right to be with their own children. Many questions about the findings of NISMART studies confound their meaning. Such questions include the extent of underreporting of family abduction by police and the breadth of the definition of kidnapping used in the studies.

No reliable national data are available to provide a basis of measuring the true extent of child abduction. However, several studies have attempted to identify victim and perpetrator paradigms. These studies have found that most child abductors are male strangers between the ages of twenty and twenty-nine, and that they generally abduct victims from the latters’ homes.

Grassroots Action and Publicity

The 1980s saw the creation of numerous organizations dedicated to raising public awareness of child abduction and lobbying for legislative action. Some of these were founded by the parents of abducted children. For example, in 1984, John Walsh, father of six-year-old Adam Walsh, who was kidnapped and murdered in Florida in 1981, founded the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC), which offers services to families of kidnapped, sexually exploited, and endangered children. The organization also helps coordinate efforts of local law-enforcement personnel, all facets of the criminal justice system, as well as members of public and private sectors to safeguard children. The NCMEC and other child advocacy organizations, such as the Polly Klaas Foundation, have been instrumental in obtaining stronger child protection laws and publicizing incidences of missing and endangered children.

One of the earliest efforts of the NCMEC was the implementation of missing-children clearinghouses in every state. In the twenty-first century, the organization expanded its work to address the problem of preventing international abductions. Additionally, in 1990, Congress passed the National Child Search Assistance Act, which mandated an immediate police report and NCIC entries for every case. After the act was passed, the numbers of missing persons reported annually increased more than 32 percent.

The highly publicized personal tragedies of families who had lost children to abduction generated widespread fears among American families concerned about protecting their own children. Local television stations began broadcasting photographs of missing children, dairies printed photos of missing children on milk cartons, utility companies included pictures of missing children in their monthly billings, and child-fingerprinting campaigns began in shopping malls. American society became highly sensitized to the issue of missing children.

Amber Alerts

In the fall of 2001, the NCMEC launched the national Amber Plan to assist cities and towns across the country with creating local plans for issuing missing-child alerts. The name has dual significance: “Amber” is an acronym for “America’s Missing: Broadcast Emergency Response;” but also, the NCMEC created the first Amber Plan in 1996 in response to the kidnapping and brutal murder of nine-year-old Amber Hagerman in Arlington, Texas.

Amber Hagerman’s body was found four days after her abduction. A neighbor who saw her abduction provided details of the kidnapping, but no system was in place to disseminate that information quickly. Afterward, outraged members of Amber’s community proposed that the broadcast media issue emergency alerts to the public immediately after children are kidnapped, providing all available details to enable members of the public to assist in apprehending offenders. The first Amber Plan was then instituted in the state of Texas. The plans are voluntary partnerships among law-enforcement agencies and broadcasters to transmit emergency signals via radio and television broadcasts, electric highway signs, electronic mail, and lottery terminals to notify the public quickly when children are abducted.

The U.S. Department of Justice has estimated that 74 percent of children who are kidnapped and found murdered are killed within the first three hours of their abductions. That astonishing statistic points up the importance of disseminating information on abductions as quickly as possible. However, Amber Alerts are not automatically activated when children are reported missing. Four criteria must first be met. The missing children must be under the age of seventeen and in danger of serious bodily harm, and law enforcement must suspect that the children have actually been kidnapped. Finally, there must be enough information on the children’s disappearance to make it possible for members of the public to aid in their recovery.

Prosecution and Punishment

Because kidnapping is not listed among the index offenses on the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports (UCR), it is difficult to obtain accurate data on rates of prosecution and punishment. Acts of kidnapping are often associated with other criminal offenses such as sexual assault and homicide. UCRs list only the most serious offenses committed in crimes involving multiple offenses. Under common law, the crime of kidnapping was historically considered a misdemeanor. Now, there is agreement among the states that it should be considered a felony. However, the states disagree on what type of felony it should be called. Most states list kidnapping as a first-degree felony that is punishable by life imprisonment. The circumstances surrounding specific offenses determine the degree of the felony and length of punishment imposed.

International parental abduction cases are investigated and resolved under the Hague Convention of 25 October 1980 on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction, an international treaty that went into effect in 1988 and was signed by 103 countries by 2022. The treaty only applies to international abductions and retentions when it is in force between two contracting countries that have signed the convention.

Bibliography

Blinken, Anthony. Annual Report on International Child Abduction. Secretary of State, United States Dept. of State, 2024. Accessed 23 May 2024.

Concannon, Diana M. Kidnapping: An Investigator's Guide. 2nd ed. Waltham: Elsevier, 2013. Print.

Fass, Paula S. Kidnapped: Child Abduction in America. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1999. Print.

Finkelhor, D., G. Hotaling, and A. Sedlak. Missing, Abducted, Runaway, and Thrownaway Children in America: First Report, Numbers, and Characteristics, National Incidence Studies. Washington: US Dept. of Justice, Office of Justice Program, Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, 1990. Print.

Gardner, Lloyd C. The Case That Never Dies: The Lindbergh Kidnapping. New Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 2004. Print.

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Newton, Michael. The Encyclopedia of Kidnappings. New York: Facts on File, 2002. Print.

Roensch, Greg. The Lindbergh Baby Kidnapping Trial: A Primary Source Account. New York: Rosen, 2003. Print.

Smart, Ed, L. Smart, and L. Morton. Bringing Elizabeth Home: A Journey of Faith and Hope. New York: Doubleday, 2003. Print.

Statista Research Department. "Number of Worldwide Kidnappings Due to Terrorism from 2007 to 2022." Statista, Apr. 2023, www.statista.com/statistics/250557/number-of-kidnappings-due-to-terrorism/. Accessed 8 July 2024.

"2022 NCIC Missing Person and Unidentified Person Statistics." Federal Bureau of Investigation. US Dept. of Justice, 2 Feb. 2023, www.fbi.gov/file-repository/2022-ncic-missing-person-and-unidentified-person-statistics.pdf/view. Accessed 8 July 2024.