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A Preliminary Examination of AMBER Alert's Effects
Timothy Griffin
University of Nevada, Reno
Monica K. Miller
University of Nevada, Reno
Jeffrey Hoppe
University of Nevada, Reno
Amy Rebideaux
University of Nevada, Reno
Rachel Hammack
University of Nevada, Reno
AMBER Alerts are public announcements designed to elicit citizen tips that could help rapidly recover abducted children before they can be harmed by their kidnappers. Using various media accounts as a data source to garner a convenience sample of 275 alerts, the authors gathered basic information, including victim–offender relationship, recovery time, and the direct effects of the alert. AMBER Alert does appear to provide some positive benefits in recovering abducted children, although the evidence suggests that the alerts are not often used in "stereotypical" stranger abduction cases, and rarely do they appear to have the effect of possibly saving lives. The alerts appear most likely to be "successful" in familial abduction situations instead of the more menacing stranger abduction cases for which they were intended. Policy implications are discussed.
Key Words: AMBER alert • child abduction • crime prevention
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Criminal Justice Policy Review, Vol. 18, No. 4,
378-394 (2007)
DOI: 10.1177/0887403407302332
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