Amber Alert Research Paper

Child kidnapping and abduction has been around for a long time. Some cases dating back to the 19th century. Time is an important factor in child kidnapping and abduction cases, sometimes as quickly as a few hours. Laws and acts regarding how cases are handled are often named after the victims of kidnapping. Examples include Code Adam and the AMBER Alert System. Children are kidnapped or abducted for a variety of reasons. Human trafficking, ransom, murder, and keeping the child for themselves. Both strangers and family can and have kidnapped or abducted children.
Kidnap, according the Cambridge Academic Content Dictionary, is “to illegally take a person away by force, usually in order to demand money in exchange for that person’s release.”
It is an acronym for America’s Missing: Broadcast Emergency Response. The AMBER Alert gives the public information of children who have been kidnapped or abducted. The information includes the child’s name, age, physical description, last known whereabouts, as well as any information on the perpetrator, what he/she might be driving, and where they are heading. The program claims to have saved over 600 lives. However, there is limited evidence to prove the fact. The AMBER Alert system has become an ethical battle because of many time-sensitive issues and that AMBER Alerts have the potential to cause negative impact to all parties involved, do not always help, that instead of being helpful, they are often more harmful. The AMBER Alert system was designed to rescue children who are in serious, life-threatening, situations. However, time is often not on the side of the authorities. Many question whether it is ethical to give hope to the families of abducted children, when hope is not always there. AMBER Alerts are often concerns to the privacy of the victims and their families. AMBER Alerts make all information about the child public, which can never be returned to privacy. Even if later details are kept private, unreleased by the media, the child’s identity is still known to the public. Rumors can also cause further damage to the victims and their families. The victims are not the only potential subjects of rumors. The perpetrators also may receive backlash, even though they may not mean any harm. Another concern is that any information made public through the AMBER Alert System can also be available to the person to took the child, therefore making it easier for that person to stay ahead of the police. This could cause the perpetrator to change directions, or the perpetrator could be going to a different place altogether, and give bad information to the public. Publicity of an AMBER Alert could constrain the nerves of the abductor, and cause