Motivation and emotion/Book/2018/Voluntary missing person motivation/Read more

Incidence:

 * United States of America:

National Crime Information Center (NCIC) (2017) received 1,907,657 reports of missing persons in 2017, with 47% of these reports defined as juveniles under the age of 21.


 * United Kingdom and Wales:

National Crime Agency (NCA) (2017) recorded 242,317 incidents on a police missing persons system in England and Wales in 2016/2017.

Children account for 60% of missing persons in the UK (122,321), as compared to 80,281 missing adults


 * Europe:

In 2016, AMBER Alert Europe reported that 3,536 children were missing across 23 different countries in Europe (AMBER Alert Europe, 2017).


 * Australia:

Over 305,000 people were reported missing in Australia from 2008-2015 (Bricknell, 2017), which is estimated to be one person reported missing every 18 minutes (Henderson, Henderson & Kiernan, 2000). Around 38,159 reports are made on average every year (Bricknell, 2017).


 * New Zealand:

There are around 8,000 reports of missing persons each year to police in New Zealand (Missing Persons: Myths and facts, 2017)

Impacts of voluntary missing persons
When someone goes missing, it not only impacts the close family and friends of the missing individual, but the community as a whole. Research has shown that with every one missing person, at least 12 other people were affected. This can be in the form of emotional, psychological, physical or financial concerns. The use of professional health services, taking days off work, and the subsequent effect this has on the workplace has implications for the whole community (AFP, 2017).