By the end of 2023, 1,200 minors had been safely found through a system that relies on the American public to assist in the search of missing children.
The AMBER Alert system is used widely throughout the U.S., with 82 plans in place to help recover children after they have been determined missing, enabling some missing child reports to be resolved. The alerts can be issued on a state-wide or local scale and more than one child can be involved in the case.
The number of children saved directly by the AMBER Alert system has been consistently low in recent years, with the highest number of resolved reports being in 2006 at 53 cases out of the 261 reported.
The number of cases of missing children added to the AMBER system have also been lower every year since 2006 to 2023.
The chart above shows how many reports were added to the nationwide system and how many cases were recovered, according to data from the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children.
In 2023, 49 cases of the 185 reports were resolved directly through the AMBER Alert system; in 2022, this was even lower at 16 cases resolved after 181 were submitted.
2022 saw the lowest number of cases resolved between 2006-2023.
The system, which stands for America's Missing: Broadcast Emergency Response, dates back to 1996 when Dallas-Fort Worth broadcasters worked with the local police to develop a warning system to find abducted children, and later other states and communities soon set up their own plans.
The fact that the system involves notifying the public of the missing children has led some researchers to express concern over whether "a perpetrator who sees the Alert could decide to murder the child immediately to avoid capture," as a number of experts wrote for The Social Science Journal.
The researchers also warned that the very system "intended to deter child abductions," could "prompt copycat crimes from perpetrators seeking publicity."
Timothy Griffin, a criminal justice professor at the University of Nevada, said that one of the questions that needs to be asked when considering the downsides of AMBER Alerts is, "Can the issuance of an alert push an unstable abductor over the edge and make that person MORE dangerous?"
When Newsweek asked how effective AMBER Alerts were based on his research, Griffin said, "they aren't."
He added they work "only about 25 percent of the time," and that the child is normally recovered "long after the perpetrator had plenty of time to inflict any intended harm."
He said this begs the question of "what the AMBER Alert really 'succeeded' at doing in such cases."
When discussing what the AMBER Alert system is most useful for, Griffin said that the "primary outcome of the system" is that it allowed public safety agencies to "lean on their use" of the system to "make it look like they're doing something."
He concluded that the "authorities need to start being more honest about the current system's limitations."
The AMBER Alert office and the Department of Justice didn't respond to multiple requests for comment.
The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children responded to Newsweek with the following statement: "At the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC), we know that AMBER Alerts play a vital role in engaging the public when a child goes missing.
"By increasing awareness and generating immediate action, AMBER Alerts have successfully helped to safely recover over 1,200 children as of December 31, 2023," the statement continued. "These alerts mobilize communities, law enforcement, and media in a united effort, significantly boosting the chances of a child's safe recovery."
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