NCJ Number
251551
Date Published
2011
Length
0 pages
Annotation
This study (NISMART-3) is the third of a series of studies undertaken in response to the mandate of the 1984 Missing Children's Assistance Act (Pub. L. 98-473) that requires the Department of Justice Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention to conduct periodic national incidence studies to determine the number of children reported missing and the number recovered in a given year.
Abstract
NISMART identifies five types of children who experienced episodes that could lead them to become missing. These include episodes in which children (1) were abducted by a family member, (2) were abducted by a nonfamily perpetrator, (3) had run away or were thrownaway, (4) were missing because they were lost or injured, and (5) were missing for benign reasons (i.e., misunderstandings). All NISMART cycles have used a household survey of adult parents/caretakers to obtain data for all episode categories. Law enforcement surveys provided supplementary data on the most serious and rarest non-family abductions (called "stereotypical kidnappings"). NISMART-3 intended to replicate the NISMART-2 design that unified the results from all component studies to provide estimates of five categories of episode children (family abducted, non-family abducted, runaway/thrownaway, missing injured or lost, and missing for benign reasons) and two categories of missing children (caretaker missing and reported missing). However, the NISMART-3 household survey of youth and Juvenile Facilities Survey were not usable, due to the extremely low case yields.