More than 10 percent of children who go missing from foster care or group homes aren’t reported to law enforcement, a new federal audit has concluded. That means no one was looking for them.
In 2021, 335,000 reports of missing children were sent to the FBI, down from 365,000 the year before. About 90% of them were found. By some estimates, 100,000 more each year are never reported to the FBI because they are found so quickly. Of those not located within six months, a disproportionate number are Black.
One reason, experts say, is that children are more likely to disappear from state custody than from stable homes. About 23% of children in foster care are Black even though Black children make up about 14% of the juvenile population in the U.S.
A federal law passed in 2014 requires employees of group homes and other facilities for foster children to report missing children to law enforcement within 24 hours. Police must then enter their information into a national database within two hours.
How many kids end up missing?
The audit by the Inspector General at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services reviewed the cases of children who went missing from foster care between July 1, 2018 and Dec. 31, 2020. They found 74,353 incidents in which children were missing for two days or longer.
MissingWhat happens when a child disappears in America?
Auditors examined a representative sample of 100 cases to draw larger conclusions. They estimated that state agencies did not follow the reporting law in nearly 14,000 instances. Of those, more than 5,600 were not reported in a timely manner. The longest lag time between a child’s disappearance and entry about the case into the federal database was 821 days late. The child was still missing when the audit was completed.
More than 8,300 disappearances were never reported to law enforcement.
Which states failed missing kids?
The 100 cases in the sample were handled by 36 state agencies. The worst-rated state was Illinois, which failed to report three cases and reported one late. Other states with unreported cases were California, Iowa and New York. Reports were delayed in six other states: Alabama, Alaska, Connecticut, Kansas, Mississippi and New Mexico.
Inadequate data and tracking cited
In some cases, state agencies never reported the missing children to law enforcement. In others, law enforcement was notified but failed to enter the case into the national database. The audit identified inadequate data and tracking systems as one reason for the problem.
“The lack of an accurate mechanism for state agencies to track their missing children reports to law enforcement makes it difficult for the state agencies to identify missing children who were not reported, to identify any weaknesses in their response times, and to take action to improve their processes for reporting episodes in accordance with federal requirements,” the audit report says.
How can missing kids be harmed?
The longer children are missing, the more likely they are to be harmed. A 2006 study by the Washington state attorney general’s office and the U.S. Department of Justice reviewed the cases of nearly 800 missing children later found murdered. In 76% of cases, the child was killed within three hours. In 88.5% of cases, they were killed within a day.
In addition to being at risk of injury or death, missing children may become victims of sex trafficking. They also are in danger of becoming addicted to drugs or alcohol.
