The story of how police found two missing boys in Missouri -- one of them missing for four years -- gives hope to parents of missing children everywhere.
It might be an entry point for you to look at some of the longest-running cases in your community.
The parents of Shawn Hornbeck said they hope their son's rescue will add "new fuel" to the hope of missing kids' parents everywhere.
Not since Elizabeth Smart's resurfacing has there been so much hope for parents in such desperate situations. (I wrote about that case in 2003.)
Check out the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children for tons of useful information.
The Klaas Foundation reports these statistics:
According the FBI's National Crime Information Center (NCIC)
- 85 percent to 90 percent of the 876,213 persons reported missing to America's law enforcement agencies in 2000 were juveniles (persons under 18 years of age). That means that 2,100 times per day parents or primary care givers felt the disappearance was serious enough to call law enforcement.
- 152,265 of the persons reported missing in 2000 were categorized as either endangered or involuntary.
- The number of missing persons reported to law enforcement has increased from 154, 341 in 1982 to 876,213 in 2000. That is an increase of 468 percent.
According to the United States Department of Justice, Office of Juvenile Justice [and] Delinquency Prevention Juvenile Justice Bulletin, June 2000
- Kidnapping makes up less than 2 percent of all violent crimes against juveniles reported to police.
- Based on the identity of the perpetrator, there are three distinct types of kidnapping: kidnapping by a relative of the victim or "family kidnapping" (49 percent), kidnapping by an acquaintance of the victim or "acquaintance kidnapping" (27 percent), and kidnapping by a stranger to the victim or "stranger kidnapping" (24 percent).
Kids, Ethnicity and Jail
The National Center on Crime and Delinquency released a new study this morning saying nonwhite kids are more likely to end up in jail than white kids, even when they are charged with the same crime.
The study is full of potential stories.
Check out the data table on Page 7 of the study [PDF], and scan down to the statistics on gambling arrests. Why are 86 percent of the juvenille gambling arrests African-American kids? Why are 93 percent of DUI arrests white kids?
How We Are Raising Our Kids
The United States Census Bureau just released a new report that may bust some myths [PDF]. The report, called "A Child's Day: 2003," describes how children spend their time, among other things, and is based on data from the burea's Survey of Income and Program Participation.
A bureau press release says:
Seventy-five percent of children 12 to 17 years old enrolled in school were academically "on track" (at or above the grade level for peers their age) in 2003, up 6 percentage points since 1994, according to the U.S. Census Bureau's latest report on how kids are spending their days.
[...] Nearly 1 in 4 children in the 12- to -17-year-old age group [was] in a special class for gifted students or did advanced work in an academic subject.
Other highlights:
- Parents were more likely to impose restrictions on TV viewing in the last decade. For example, about 67 percent of children 3 to 5 had limits on what television shows they could watch, when, and for how long in 2003, up significantly from 54 percent in 1994.
- Eating with a parent was less likely to occur for teenagers than children under 6. In 2003, 24 percent of children 12 to 17 ate breakfast with a parent every day in a typical week, while 58 percent ate dinner together. Among children under 6, 57 percent ate breakfast with mom or dad, and 79 percent were at the table for dinner.
- About 72 percent of kids under 6 were praised by mom or dad three or more times per day, compared with 51 percent of children 6 to 11 years old and 37 percent of 12- to 17-year-olds.
- Children 1 to 2 were read to an average of 7.8 times in the previous week of the survey, while children 3 to 5 were read to an average of 6.8 times in the previous week.
- In 2003, 18 million children (38 percent) under 12 had been cared for regularly in a nonrelative child care arrangement at some point in their childhood. Nearly half (47 percent) of 3- to 5-year-olds had been in nonrelative child care most likely preschool.
- Children 12 to 17 were more likely than children 6 to 11 to participate in sports (42 percent and 36 percent, respectively). About one-third of both groups participated in club activities.
- Aside from normal progression within a school system, 24 percent of children 6 to 11 and 41 percent of 12- to 17-year-olds had changed schools at some time since first grade. For both age groups, there was little change in these percentages since 2000, but both were lower than those reported in 1994.
- Eleven percent (2.7 million) of children 12 to 17 had been expelled or suspended from school at least once in 2003. Boys (14 percent) were more likely than girls (8 percent) to have been suspended.
- About 30 million children participated in the National School Lunch Program in 2003, including 1.6 million kids under 6, 15 million 6- to 11-year-olds and 13.4 million children 12 to 17.
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Editor's Note: Al's Morning Meeting is a compendium of ideas, edited story excerpts and other materials from a variety of Web sites, as well as original concepts and analysis. When the information comes directly from another source, it will be attributed and a link will be provided whenever possible. The column is fact-checked, but depends upon the accuracy and integrity of the original sources cited. Errors and inaccuracies found will be corrected.
