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By Stephen Lee

	Footnote Comics: Alias Written by Brian Michael Bendis and art by Michael Gaydos. Published by Marvel Comics. What is this comic about? : A long time ago, Jessica Jones was a superhero. Now, she is a small-time private detective with her own agency, Alias Investigations. She drinks too much, she's had some bad luck with men, and she's trying to make a life for herself. She works a lot for Matt Murdock, the lawyer who doubles as Daredevil; she used to be friends with Carol Danvers (a member of the Avengers); and she is starting to date Scott Lang, a divorced father and former convict who now helps the Avengers occasionally as Ant-Man. Recommended Reading : Alias is published monthly by Marvel Comics, and are being collected regularly in trade paperbacks. The first storyline (collected in Vol. 1) introduces her and has her trapped within a conspiracy, but I prefer the more down-to-earth storylines (collected in Vol. 1 and Vol. 2) in which she tracks down a celebrity wannabe, searches for a missing girl in a small town, and goes on a blind date. For more information, go to Marvel.com. Art from Issue #11. Missing children. All covers and panels are copyright Marvel Comics. The "Missing Children" Problem, including the Kidnapping of Children (last updated October 6, 2002) (back to top) Despite intensive media coverage of particular incidents, the stereotypical kidnapping of a child by a stranger is a very rare instance, occurring only about 200-300 times a year, according to a 1990 federally-funded study that is still considered authoritative. Statistics going much higher for so-called "missing children" are usually the result of lumping in what the most authoritative federal study calls "extremely dissimilar social problems," such as runaways, abductions by non-custodial family members, and technical abductions such as violent crimes that involved moving a victim distances as little as 22 feet. The problem of "missing children" first emerged as a political issue in the early 1980s after several unrelated incidents, such as the 1981 kidnapping and murder of Adam Walsh, the 9-year-old son of current television personality John Walsh. With attention on this new problem, many people threw around statistics that were not necessarily founded in hard data or that were not clearly defined. Over time, some began to cast doubt on these statistics and raise questions about their basis in fact. The Denver Post, in a Pulitzer-Prize winning series, pointed out the "numbers gap" between such statistics and the number of investigations conducted by the FBI of children abducted by strangers. The FBI's investigative jurisdiction is limited to crimes that violate federal statutes or cross state lines, but even so, if there really were 50,000 children kidnapped by strangers a year, why was the FBI investigating less than 100 cases a year in the 1980s? To help understand the controversy, the Department of Justice commissioned the National Incidence Study of Missing, Abducted, Runaway and Thrownaway Children (NISMART), which was released in 1990 and is still considered the best source of data on the "missing children" problem. Using a household telephone survey, a review of police records in 21 counties in 16 different states, and a new analysis of FBI data, the NISMART study broke down the "missing children" problem into specific categories and to make some estimates. The study also broke these estimates down into "broad scope" numbers for those situations that a family might be concerned about but which are often resolved quickly and without incident, and "policy-focal" numbers for more serious situations which might concern police and social-service agencies, and in which a child might be in danger. Stereotypical kidnappings (a.k.a. stranger abductions) (200-300 a year). This is what people usually think about when discussing "missing children." In these cases, the perpetrator was a stranger; the child was detained overnight, killed, or transported at least 50 miles; and the perpetrator either wanted ransom in exchange for child's return or expressed intention to keep child permanently. Compared to non-family abductions, the victims and perpetrators here are more likely to be Caucasian, the victims are less likely to have been lured away, and the victims are less likely to have been sexually assaulted. Legal-definition non-family abductions (3,200-4,600 successful abductions a year, with about 114,600 children experiencing an attempted non-family abduction a year). In these cases, the perpetrator was not a family member but was not necessarily a stranger; the child was moved at least 20 feet by use of force or threat; and the perpetrator concealed the child's whereabouts, requested ransom, or expressed an intention to keep child permanently. This category also includes instances where a non-family member took a child apparently to physically or sexually assault the child. Family abductions (354,100 "broad scope" a year, and 163,200 "policy focal"). Broad-scope family abductions occur when a family member takes a child in violation of a custody agreement, or keeps a child in violation of a custody agreement for at least one night. Policy-focal abductions also involve concealment of the child's whereabouts, transporting the child out-of-state, or indications that the abductor intends to keep the child permanently. Runaways (450,700 "broad scope" a year, and 133,500 "policy focal"). Broad-scope runaways are children who leave home without permission and stay away overnight, or who refuse to return home for at least one or two nights. Policy-focal children are those broad-scope runaways who are without a secure and familiar place to stay while away from home. Thrownaway children (127,100 "broad scope" a year, and 59,200 "policy focal"). A child is a broad-scope thrownaway if the child has been told to leave the household, has been away from home and a caretaker has refused to take the child back, if the child had run away and the caretaker made no efforts to locate the child or did not care if the child returned, or if the child had been abandoned or deserted. A child is a policy-focal thrownaway if the child was abandoned or if the child had no secure or familiar place to stay. Lost, injured or otherwise missing (438,200 "broad scope" a year, and 139,100 "policy focal" a year). Children in the broad-scope version of this category are those who were missing for a period of time (from a few minutes to overnight) for a variety of reasons. Those in the policy-focal version involved situations serious enough to warrant calling the police. Breaking apart these statistics and not including any definitions can cause some confusion. For example, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children's website as of September 2002 provides an arguably incomplete answer, at best, to the "frequently asked question" of "how many missing children are there." Explicitly citing to the NISMART, the NCMEC does not explain what "abduction" can mean, only uses the "broad scope" numbers, and leaves out the stereotypical kidnapping figure of 200-300 a year or any mention of the "policy-focal" numbers. A reader may be left with the impression that there are more "missing children" than the NISMART report itself would have indicated. In fact, one of the NISMART's main authors has criticized how advocates have grouped "missing children" statistics together and how they have used anecdotal evidence of specific instances of stranger abductions to seek political change. "It has been very tempting to use parents' fears about stranger abductions to galvanize politicians to protect children from other crimes and other threats, but it is a mistake to focus public policy concerning child victimization on the crime of stranger abduction. It is not just that the number of such crimes is relatively small but that abduction is not a particularly good category for organizing or counting the criminal victimization of children," David Finkelhor and others wrote in a June 1992 article. "The nature and seriousness of abductions are mostly determined by the nature and severity of the other crimes that are committed in their course, such as rape, assault, and murder. And in fact, these crime categories are better focal points for action on child victimization." A recent study funded by the Department of Justice backed up the NISMART's conclusion that juvenile kidnapping is a relatively rare crime. According to that June 2000 report by the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS), kidnapping of juveniles made up only one-tenth of one percent of crimes against all individuals in 12 states in the survey, and only 1.5 percent of all violent crimes against juveniles. The report also concluded that the most common type of kidnapping was by a family member (49 percent), then by an acquaintance (27 percent), and finally by a stranger (24 percent). Some advocates have occasionally pointed to statistics derived from other studies, but these statistics are not necessarily designed for the ways in which they are sometimes used and sometimes have limitations. For example : A National Center for Missing and Exploited Children study in 1986 estimated that there were about 30,000 stranger abductions of children a year. However, this estimation was made by extrapolating from the kidnapping rates in only two cities (Houston, Texas and Jacksonville, Florida) that had rates of serious violent crime at least twice that of the national average. The kidnapping statistics also did not distinguish between instances where victims were missing for less than 24 hours (which accounted for 97.6 percent of all cases studied) and those where they permanently disappeared. The National Crime Information Center annually tracks the number of missing-person cases reported to it each year; in 2001, there were 840,279 missing persons, and about 85-90 percent were children. However, unlike the NISMART, this statistic is not broken down into specific categories and it does not reflect how many cases were actual kidnappings that required investigation and which were, for example, runaways or family abductions. For example, in 1985, the NCIC entered 14,816 cases in its involuntary missing files, but the FBI only received 867 cases to investigate kidnapping, some of which involved adult victims. Regardless of the magnitude of the problem, the "missing children" problem has rallied many efforts to help, though some solutions are not necessarily well-tailored to all the different aspects of the overall problem. One solution that has received much attention in recent years has been the implementation of "Amber Alert" programs that mobilize police forces in a region to locate abducted children. Named after a 9-year-old Texas girl who was kidnapped and murdered in 1996, the programs have been adopted in more than 15 states, but critics have said that overuse and non-selective use could dilute their effectiveness. The overall issue has also been kept alive through the now-commonplace photographs on milk cartons, a practice which was started in 1984 by Midwest dairy-owner Walter Woodbury and which quickly become commonplace due to public and private efforts. Schools, private companies, and nonprofit organizations have also organized programs to fingerprint children to identify them if they ever disappear and are recovered. Sources: Martin L. Forst & Martha-Elia Blomquist, Missing Children : Rhetoric and Reality (Lexington Books, 1991). Joel Best, Threatened Children : Rhetoric and concern about child-victims (University of Chicago Press, 1990). Nancy L. Asdigian, David Finkelhor, and Gerald Hotaling, Varieties of Nonfamily Abduction of Children and Adolescents, Criminal Justice and Behavior (Volume 22, Number 3, September 1995). David Finkelhor, Gerald Hotaling, and Nancy Asdigian, Attempted Non-Family Abductions, Child Welfare (Volume 74, Number 5, September-October 1995). Eugene M. Lewit and Linda Schuurmann Baker, Missing Children, Children and Managed Care (Volume 8, Number 2, Spring 1998) (available on-line via The Future of Children here. David Finkelhor and Richard Ormrod, Kidnapping of Children: Patterns from NIBRS (June 2000), available via the Department of Justice's Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, on-line here. The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children is on-line here. Information on Amber Alerts is on-line here and here.			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