A Study of the Characteristics of Outstanding Missing Persons: Implications for the Development of Police Risk Assessment

Abstract

The police response to missing persons has attracted growing levels of scrutiny, resulting in an increasing demand to ensure police decisions taken about the likely “outcome” of a disappearance are based on empirical evidence as well as clinical expertise. While most missing persons return soon after their disappearance, a small proportion will remain missing for prolonged periods of time and require ongoing police review and risk assessment. This article presents the findings from an analysis of over 1,000 people reported missing to the police who, at the time of data collection, had remained missing for more than one year. The findings illustrate that long-term outstanding missing persons are more likely to be male, adults and over-represented by people from minority ethnic backgrounds. While it is not possible to know what has actually happened to the individuals concerned, the study indicates that the overall sample is likely to comprise a number of discrete subgroups of individuals experiencing different outcomes (e.g., suicide, homicide, assuming a new identity).

Keywords:

• Policing
• Missing persons
• Risk assessment
• Outcomes

Notes

The PNMPB collect details of missing persons who remain missing for more than 14 days from all police forces in the United Kingdom. However, the degree to which different police forces comply with sending cases to the PNMPB varies. It is unlikely that this is a complete record of all outstanding missing persons owing to problems with forces submitting cases to the PNMPB. Given that the PNMPB is situated within New Scotland Yard and has strong links with the Metropolitan Police Missing Persons Bureau (MPMPB), it is believed that cases from the Metropolitan Police Service area are over-represented in the ‘national picture’, and this may influence the characteristics of the sample described in this article.

All ages relate to the age at the time the individual was first reported missing. At no stage have the ages been adjusted to reflect the age at the time of data collection.

The Metropolitan Police cancelled sample refers to 32,705 cases that were cancelled by the MPMPB from 1 January 2000 to 12 September 2002 (the date when the data were actually retrieved from the archives of the MPMPB database). Analysis of these cases are reported elsewhere (Newiss, n.d.) to illustrate how the risk of being found dead changes over the duration for which people remain missing. The data have been used in this article to allow comparison between the characteristics of the outstanding missing persons sample and what would be expected from the wider population of missing persons reported to the police.

Crown copyright material is reproduced with the permission of the Controller of HMSO.