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States' Amber Alert Criteria, Records Vary Widely

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The Associated Press

Published: November 21, 2008

ATLANTA - Authorities count hundreds of Amber Alert cases across the country as success stories when they start explaining why the media-friendly and politically popular bulletins are so important.

Yet despite a federal law meant to create a uniform system, an Associated Press review shows wide variations in what triggers an Amber Alert from one state to the next, which can heighten the tension when a suspect crosses state lines.

The AP examined Amber Alert records from all 50 states and found that some barely keep track of the alerts they've issued, let alone whether they worked. A few states don't have anyone designated to oversee their programs.

That poor recordkeeping makes it difficult to tell whether investigators have missed a chance to safely recover an abducted child because of differences in the state laws and their application.

Twelve states refuse to put out an alert when a parent calls police amid a custody fight, but others see that as a legitimate reason to enlist help from the public. Twelve states issue Amber Alerts for adults with mental or physical disabilities, but other states save their bulletins solely for abducted children.

Among the disparities those different interpretations create: New Jersey has issued just four alerts since 2005, but Michigan, with a slightly larger population, has issued 100.

All that despite a 5-year-old federal law requiring that every state have a child abduction alert system in place. The law also requires that those systems be uniform to help coordination and that the U.S. Department of Justice appoint someone to get the states on the same page.

Critics question the basic premise of Amber Alerts: that they help find and save abducted children. Kidnappers who kill children usually do so in the first six hours after they take their victims, experts say. Often it takes nearly that long just to get an alert issued.

A few days after she disappeared in April 2006, 10-year-old Jamie Rose Bolin of Purcell, Okla., was found dead in a neighbor's apartment, the victim of what investigators said was a cannibalistic fantasy. Police did not initially put out an Amber Alert because they suspected she had run away and had no reports of an abduction.

An alert was eventually issued, but police said the girl probably was killed the day she was taken.

"There's nothing wrong with making people feel better in the security of children. It does exactly that," said Jack Levin, a criminology professor at Northeastern University in Boston. "When you're actually talking about preventing homicides, you have to look elsewhere for a solution."

Law enforcement officials insist the alerts can be crucial to recovering endangered children, even when multiple states are involved.
Recordkeeping also varies drastically among the states: In Utah, detailed records of each alert issued are available on the Internet, including a narrative of each case, but Mississippi state police have only handwritten files on the three alerts they've issued since 2005. That makes it tough to tell whether an Amber Alert makes a child any more likely to be saved. Advocates, including the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, say it can't hurt.

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