What is a missing person?
Anyone whose whereabouts cannot be established will be considered as missing until located, and their well-being or otherwise confirmed.
Criticisms of definition?
Nearly everyone can technically be classed as missing when they’re late, actively avoiding family or wanted for a crime
Should be some kind of aggravating factor included. Not just ‘whereabouts cannot be established’
Reasonable efforts need to have been made to locate the person
Timeframe should be allowed before a persons is designated missing
Needs to be a degree of risk in the definition
Missing and crime?
Murder Abduction Child abuse Sexual exploitation Domestic violence Human trafficking Asylum seekers
Fugitives - escaping to avoid charges or from prison
Crime while missing - may commit crimes to get money/food. Repeat missing routinely treated as criminal.
Why do children and young people go missing?
Run away from home (60%)
- familial issues
- related to mental health
- to commit suicide
- gang involvement
Abductions
Getting lost
Child abductions
By parent or family member - 20%
Non-familial
- stranger = 40%
- exploitation = 25%
- revenge or dispute = 6%
- for ransom = 4%
- child abduction and homicide
Why do adults go missing?
Decided
- escape from problems
- commit suicide
- mental health
Drifted
- lost contact
- transient lifestyle
Unintentional
- dementia/mental health
- accident
Forced
- victim of a crime
- forced apart from others
What are stages of missing persons investigations?
Risk assessment Search and rescue Missing person appeals Families support Returning home Harm reduction strategies
What is risk assessment?
Under-researched, highly subjective
Profiling as a methodology applied to missing persons
What is search and rescue?
Usually voluntary organisations
Searches may be carried out in urban areas, including door to door enquiries, searches of car parks or recreation grounds.
In the countryside, on open land or in wooded areas.
What is missing person appeals?
A communication by those searching for the missing person to a wider network of people who may be able to help locate that person and to the missing person directly.
What is families support?
The unresolved grief and the fluctuations between hope and hopelessness.
Emotional experiences might result in physical symptoms.
What is returning home?
Return interviews
Feelings of guilt or uncertainty
Families become overprotective or frustrated
What is harm reduction strategies?
A person going missing should be regarded as an indicator of other issues (exploitative and criminal behaviour against vulnerable individuals.
How are missing persons viewed by the police?
Often a low priority for police even though it is a ‘policing issue’
Police self-identify as having crime fighting role rather than peacekeeping role. Missing person cases generally do not fit remit
What is prospective memory?
Situations in which a person has to remember to engage in an action when they encounter a particular cue in the environment during the course of one’s normal day to day activities
Event-based
Time-based
What is event-based?
Remembering to mail the letter the next time one is by a mailbox
What is time-based?
Remembering to take the bins out on Wednesday afternoon
What’s the typical procedure for prospective memory?
Lab settings
Two tasks
- primary task = demanding ongoing activity
Ppts may be presented with several hundred words and might be asked to make pleasantness ratings for each of these
- secondary task = based on the encounter of a certain PM cue
They are told to be on the lookout for the words chair, monkey and toothbrush and to press the ‘alt’ key when they encounter these items.
Prospective person memory?
Successful completion of the task requires members of the general public to contact authorities (delayed intention) when the encounter a particular person (PM cue) as they go about other attention demanding tasks during their daily lives (ongoing activity)
How good as we at prospective memory?
Very limited number of studies have looked at our prospective person memory abilities
If we are so bad at recognising someone who we have previously seen in real life (eyewitness identifications), how good are we at recognising someone we have never encountered in real life?
Potential applications not just for missing people investigations but for fugitives, anti-terrorism and military personnel
What are methodological approaches? (Lab)
Grocery store
- slide shows
- press a key every time they saw one of the items/goals
- between 26% and 36% correctly identified
Team sorting
- keep the teams equally matched by gender
- 34% correctly identified the target
What are methodological approaches? (Field)
Media psychology study
- watch and rate videos
- if they later encounter the target and contact the researchers they have a chance to win up to $200
- the target shows up at a location where it is known that the ppts will also be (e.g. campus dining hall, hallway of the lab)
- between none and 10% accurate sightings
Lectures
- shown a photo of the target during a lecture
- could win up to $100 if report a sighting
- two days later the target came to the classroom to deliver photocopies to the instructor and in loud voice said ‘good morning’ facing the students
- less than 5% of student identified the target
-
Why were the % of accurate sightings so low?
Poor memory of target
The role of temporal and spatial info cues => expectancy => intend to look to the target
Attentional resources
It is socially unaccepted to look at strangers faces for a long period of time
The mismatch between the photograph and their current appearance
