Missing People

Question 1

What is a missing person?

Answer 1

Anyone whose whereabouts cannot be established will be considered as missing until located, and their well-being or otherwise confirmed.

Question 2

Criticisms of definition?

Answer 2

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

Question 3

Missing and crime?

Answer 3

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.

Question 4

Why do children and young people go missing?

Answer 4

Run away from home (60%)

• familial issues
• related to mental health
• to commit suicide
• gang involvement

Abductions
Getting lost

Question 5

Child abductions

Answer 5

By parent or family member - 20%

Non-familial

• stranger = 40%
• exploitation = 25%
• revenge or dispute = 6%
• for ransom = 4%
• child abduction and homicide

Question 6

Why do adults go missing?

Answer 6

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

Question 7

What are stages of missing persons investigations?

Answer 7

Risk assessment 
Search and rescue 
Missing person appeals 
Families support 
Returning home 
Harm reduction strategies

Question 8

What is risk assessment?

Answer 8

Under-researched, highly subjective

Profiling as a methodology applied to missing persons

Question 9

What is search and rescue?

Answer 9

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.

Question 10

What is missing person appeals?

Answer 10

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.

Question 11

What is families support?

Answer 11

The unresolved grief and the fluctuations between hope and hopelessness.

Emotional experiences might result in physical symptoms.

Question 12

What is returning home?

Answer 12

Return interviews
Feelings of guilt or uncertainty
Families become overprotective or frustrated

Question 13

What is harm reduction strategies?

Answer 13

A person going missing should be regarded as an indicator of other issues (exploitative and criminal behaviour against vulnerable individuals.

Question 14

How are missing persons viewed by the police?

Answer 14

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

Question 15

What is prospective memory?

Answer 15

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

Question 16

What is event-based?

Answer 16

Remembering to mail the letter the next time one is by a mailbox

Question 17

What is time-based?

Answer 17

Remembering to take the bins out on Wednesday afternoon

Question 18

What’s the typical procedure for prospective memory?

Answer 18

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.

Question 19

Prospective person memory?

Answer 19

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)

Question 20

How good as we at prospective memory?

Answer 20

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

Question 21

What are methodological approaches? (Lab)

Answer 21

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

Question 22

What are methodological approaches? (Field)

Answer 22

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
-

Question 23

Why were the % of accurate sightings so low?

Answer 23

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