The America’s Missing: Broadcast Emergency Response (AMBER) Alert system was created after the abduction and murder of Amber Hagerman in 1996. AMBER Alerts are police-issued notifications providing information (e.g., about the abductor’s car, the child’s name, the child’s last known location) to the public in order to help locate a missing child and abductor. Alerts were intended for stranger abductions but are most commonly used in cases of familial abductions or other missing-child circumstances. AMBER Alert research branches into the fields of criminology, law/policy, and psychology. This article discusses these fields as well as a psychological analysis and the future directions of research.
Effectiveness of AMBER Alert: A Criminological Analysis
Criminologists have discovered a number of key themes related to the limited effectiveness of the AMBER Alert system. First, most AMBER Alerts have no effect. Even when they are allegedly successful, they do not appear to routinely save lives. Furthermore, even when AMBER Alerts are in fact successful, it is typically not in clearly life-threatening circumstances. The so-called success cases overwhelmingly involve parents, other family members, and other categories of offender not suggestive of the stereotypical abductors or abductions that the Alert system was designed to address.
Second, most AMBER Alert success cases involve recovery times usually much longer than 3 hr—a crucial consideration in light of research showing that most child abduction–murder victims are dead within that timeframe. Of course, an important caveat in interpreting AMBER Alert case outcomes is the impossibility of knowing what would have happened in any particular AMBER Alert case had no Alert been issued. Even so, it is still possible to reasonably speculate on the likely threat posed. One study found no statistically significant differences along measurable factors between Amber Alert success cases versus cases in which the Alert had no effect. This suggests that the unmeasurable factor of actual threat was comparable—and minimal—for both categories of cases.
Another major theme emerging from AMBER Alert research is the unavoidably conflicting imperatives of rapid issuance and the provision of accurate and authentic information. One study found that the intuitively plausible issuance criteria of peripheral harm (i.e., harm committed by the abductor against someone other than the child) is ironically indicative of less threat to the abducted child. This finding was driven by the identity of most abductors in AMBER Alert cases (parents and/or other family members) who can usually be presumed to pose no immediate threat to the child regardless of their hostility to other parties. In short, evidence suggests that AMBER Alerts, although well intentioned, are not particularly effective at addressing their intended purpose of rescuing children from stranger abductors.
AMBER Alert as Crime Control Theater (CCT): A Policy Analysis
Some policy scholars have classified AMBER Alerts as CCT, a term used to describe legal actions that appear to work but are actually ineffective. Four criteria determine whether a legal action can be classified as CCT: (1) the legal action was a response to moral panic, (2) the legal action receives unquestioned promotion and acceptance, (3) the legal response relies on mythic narratives, and (4) the legal action is an empirical failure. Some researchers have classified the AMBER Alert system as CCT because it meets all of these criteria. For instance, AMBER Alerts were created after the abduction–death of Amber Hagerman, which sparked widespread moral panic about child abductions. Moreover, few people question the effectiveness of AMBER Alerts. Lawmakers and the public often strongly support the AMBER Alert system. AMBER Alerts also appeal to mythic narratives in that they target the stranger danger narrative within society. Finally, AMBER Alerts are empirical failures and are rarely effective in saving children from stranger abductions.
Overselling AMBER Alert: A Psycholegal Analysis
Certainly, rescuing abducted children is an important endeavor, and even legal actions that are little more than symbolic can serve an important purpose (e.g., communicating that lawmakers are doing something, communicating norms that abduction is a serious crime). Even so, legal scholars have expressed concern that communicating that the system is highly effective (i.e., overselling) creates a multitude of dangers. For instance, overselling can lead to the creation of a one-type-fits-all image of abductors who target children. This focuses the attention on more stereotypical abductors (e.g., strangers) and takes the focus off of people who are most likely to abduct children (e.g., family members). The message that AMBER Alerts are effective disregards the fact that most of the so-called successes occur in situations in which the Alerts were never intended (i.e., family member abducts the child). Thus, people believe that these Alerts are effective at saving children from stranger abductions. This belief could lead people to focus on stereotypical abductors (i.e., strangers) and not focus on nonstereotypical abductors (e.g., family members).
Another danger of overselling AMBER Alerts is that there is little accountability for whether or not the policy is successful. Unquestioned promotion and acceptance makes it difficult to critically examine the policy to determine its effectiveness or to discuss ways to improve the policy. Overselling also discourages discourse about whether money could be spent in ways that would address more common child dangers or deaths (e.g., choking) as compared to rare events such as abductions.
Finally, overselling AMBER Alerts can lead to an increase in public panic. By overselling AMBER Alerts, people believe that child abductions are more common than they really are, possibly leading parents and children to be overly cautious (e.g., caution in making new relationships or allowing children to play outside). Although rescuing children is important, legal scholars have urged policy makers to be cautious in overselling AMBER Alerts because of such dangers.
AMBER Alert and Behavior: A Psychological Analysis
Psychologists have begun to study the AMBER Alert system. They focus, for instance, on the psychological reasons that AMBER Alerts might not work as intended as well as on the AMBER Alert’s effect on psychological processes. A few studies address social cognitive processes related to AMBER Alerts. For example, child abductions can trigger hindsight bias (i.e., the I knew it all along effect, such as “I knew from the minute I read about the abduction that the child would be killed”) under specific conditions: when the abductor is a stranger and when the abducted child is harmed. Although this study was conducted in a laboratory, it is likely that these effects increase support for real AMBER Alerts, as Alerts are designed to assist in cases of stranger abduction.
Similarly, in the event of a child abduction in which the child is not rescued, failure to issue an AMBER Alert can result in more negative perceptions of the law enforcement agency in charge of issuing Alerts. According to one study, this occurs when the lack of an AMBER Alert was due to officer error. This phenomenon might occur due to community members engaging in counterfactual thinking (i.e., “if only” thinking, such as “if only the police had acted sooner, the child would’ve been rescued”).
Emotions (anticipated guilt, positive affect, and panic) and cognitive processing styles are linked to greater support for the AMBER Alert system. Specifically, negative emotions are associated with more positive attitudes toward AMBER Alerts, but positive emotions are not. Faith in intuition (i.e., the tendency to rely on one’s gut instincts in decision-making) is also associated with more positive attitudes, but need for cognition (i.e., the tendency to use logic in decision-making) is not directly related. Finally, the more people process information experientially (i.e., emotionally), the more positive attitudes they have toward AMBER Alerts.
Another line of psychology research has investigated whether attitudes toward AMBER Alerts can be altered through education. For instance, educating people about the low effectiveness of AMBER Alerts reduces support for AMBER Alerts but only if education occurs via high-quality messaging (e.g., messages that cite experts, statistics, and specific research). Similarly, education can reduce how much blame (measured as damage awards in a civil lawsuit) individuals assign to law enforcement in the event of a failure to rescue an abducted child.
Next, some research has focused on the effects of reading about abductions and AMBER Alerts. Reading about a child abduction causes heightened emotions, no matter the outcome of the abduction. Reading about an abduction labeled as an AMBER Alert leads participants to report that the message is more important and that they would make greater attempts to be involved (compared to reading about an abduction that was not labeled as an AMBER Alert). This suggests that the label of AMBER Alert prompts people to pay attention to the information, but another study found that reading about an AMBER Alert does not increase one’s ability to recognize faces.
Finally, limited research has found that certain groups of people (e.g., women, community members) are more likely to support the AMBER Alert system than their counterparts.
Researchers have suggested that some psychological phenomena might apply to AMBER Alerts, but these notions are yet untested. For instance, common errors in memory acquisition, retention, and retrieval are likely to make it difficult for the public to accurately identify a child and abductor. The bystander effect suggests that public participation is likely low because everyone believes that someone else who sees the Alert will help. Research on helping behavior suggest that social norms and pressure, individual characteristics, and perceptions of crime severity are related to helping behavior and willingness to report crimes to police in general. Researchers have also been concerned that AMBER Alerts could produce copycat crimes by media-seeking criminals, that Alerts could encourage the criminal to secure a different car than the one described in the Alert (in essence making the Alert counterproductive), and that the Alert system has little deterrent effect, as most abductors are not likely thinking rationally about the crime.
Future Directions in AMBER Alert Research
Criminologists, legal/policy analysts, and psychologists have studied a variety of aspects about the ALERT system, but there are many areas yet to be studied. First, research could reveal whether different Alert message formats (e.g., photographs, labels, media used) improve the public’s willingness and ability to respond to AMBER Alerts. Similarly, public service programs could attempt to encourage bystander intervention. Such measures would improve the public’s ability to assist with an abduction. Second, AMBER Alert outcomes could be explored. There has been some concern about Alert fatigue: Individuals might ignore or fail to remember AMBER Alerts more when these alerts are more common. Other outcomes worthy of studying include whether the issuance of Alerts prompt abductors to alter their behavior (e.g., to release the child or to kill the child as a means of destroying evidence of the abduction). Also, outcomes related to the public’s behavior should be studied to determine whether exposure to information about abductions increases feelings of fear, exaggerated perceptions of abduction risk, being protective of one’s own children, or fear of strangers. Finally, the psychological hypotheses discussed above could be the basis of future research more specifically concerning the AMBER Alert.
It is inherently difficult to study the real-world phenomena such as AMBER Alerts because it is impossible to predict when one will occur. Laboratory studies can only approximate the real-world responses. It is difficult to access perpetrators in order to study their motivations. Research is also difficult because there is no nation-wide database of Alerts, their circumstances, and their outcomes.
References:
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- Griffin, T., & Miller, M. K. (2008). Child abduction, AMBER Alert, and “Crime Control Theater.” Criminal Justice Review, 33, 159–176. doi:10.1177/0734016808316778
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- Sicafuse, L. L., & Miller, M. K. (2010). Social psychological influences on the popularity of AMBER Alerts. Criminal Justice and Behavior, 37, 1237–1254. doi:10.1177/0093854810379618
- Sicafuse, L. L., & Miller, M. K. (2012). The effects of information processing and message quality on attitudes toward the AMBER alert system. Applied Psychology and Criminal Justice, 8, 69–86.