Thursday, July 18, 2002
Child Abductions by Strangers Rare
It might be worth reminding your readers, viewers, listeners, and online visitors, that cases such as the Samantha Runnion abduction and killing are extremely rare. As you will see below, only about 3.5 percent of all missing kids are abduction cases like this one. While the statistics do not make this case any less awful, “The idea that you’re going to run into John Wayne Gacy in line at the supermarket is not really likely,” says David Murray, director of the Statistical Assessment Service (STATS), in Washington. His organization’s job is to set the record straight on the numbers the media bandy about.
STATS says, “For all the kids pictured on milk cartons as ‘Missing,’ the vast majority are runaways, over age 18, or were taken by one of their parents in a custody dispute, he says. Exclude them, and you end with no more than 600 children a year kidnapped by strangers. ‘It’s not a good thing,’ he readily admits. But in a country of 270 million, ‘It’s really, really rare.'”
The National Crime Information Center classified missing children in the year 2000:
“Juvenile” -– 651,209 cases (81 percent of all cases) declined 5 percent from 2000. (Police enter most missing child cases in the “Juvenile” category, including some nonfamily abductions where there is no evidence of foul play.)
“Endangered” –- 119,237 cases (about 15 percent of cases), a decrease of 1.2 percent from 2000. (Defined as “missing and in the company of another person under circumstances indicating that his/her physical safety is in danger.”)
“Involuntary” –- 28,765 cases (about 3.5 percent of all cases), a decrease of 8.8 percent from 2000. (Defined as “missing under circumstances indicating that the disappearance was not voluntary; i.e., abduction or kidnapping.”)
Here are some common sense summer safety tips for kids/parents. Police get about 2,000 missing children calls per day in America.
Story and coverage ideas: Spend a day with the missing persons bureau in your home town. How do they know when a case involves a runaway or an abduction? How many people/children are missing in your town right now?
While I’m on the topic, would somebody ask your police department if those fingerprinting/ID card programs that my kids are constantly being asked to take part in do any good? Has there ever been a child who was found because of one of those fingerprinting programs? One company, Fingerprint America, (which I pulled randomly from the Internet) says on its website that “Fingerprinting won’t help to prevent abduction, or even keep a child from running away. However, fingerprinting a child will likely encourage dialogue between parents and the child about the issue of safety.” That same company has a child DNA collection kit. Is this necessary?
in May, The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children released a survey that found not enough parents know the height, weight, and eye color of all their children — three key pieces of information needed by investigators in missing children cases.
The survey found that 34 percent of parents could not recall these vital statistics for all their children.
While the numbers show most parents — 66 percent — do know these statistics, those who helped conduct the survey say those numbers need to improve.
In 2001, 840,279 missing persons (adults and juveniles) were reported to the police and entered into the FBI’s National Crime Information Center (NCIC). This represents the smallest number of missing persons reports since 1992 (801,358).
Resources:
-A missing children resources center; includes several state sites.
-About.com did an interesting story about the problems that arise when the missing juvenile is a college student.
How Much is a Dead Janitor Worth?
SF Gate reported, “What do hundreds of major U.S. corporations have in common with hundreds of deceased slaveholders? All took out life insurance policies on their workers — in some cases without their workers’ knowledge or permission — and collected the insurance proceeds when they died.”
The Arkansas Times writes, “The question was whether some of Arkansas’ biggest companies engaged in the practice of buying life insurance on low-ranking employees — sometimes without the employees’ knowledge — in order to get tax breaks, as well as collect benefits when a covered employee died.”
The controversial insurance is sometimes called “dead peasants insurance” or “dead janitors” insurance. It’s not to be confused with the insurance that big companies often buy covering their top executives, whose deaths might actually result in some financial loss to the company.
The Wall Street Journal says, “The practice is as widespread as it is little-known. Millions of current and former workers at hundreds of large companies are thus worth a great deal to their employers dead, as well as alive, yielding billions of dollars in tax breaks over the years, as well as a steady stream of tax-free death benefits.”
According to articles in the Houston Chronicle and Wall Street Journal in April, at least 100 large corporations boost profits by taking advantage of the tax-shelter features of life insurance.
That could change, however, if a federal legislation introduced by Rep. Gene Green (D., Texas) is passed by Congress. The bill would force companies to tell employees, former employees and their families if the companies have taken out insurance policies on their lives, and also to disclose the amount of each policy and the name of the insurer.
The Washington Post said in a May 30 story,”Some survivors and insurance experts are offended by the practice.
“It raises very serious public policy questions,” said J. Robert Hunter, a former Texas insurance commissioner who is now with the Consumer Federation of America. “What is the purpose of this? If it’s just to make money, I don’t think that’s sufficient” reason to allow it.
Why do Companies Do This?
The WP says, “Many states, including Maryland and Virginia, specifically permit this kind of insurance, and insurers and employers argue that it enables companies to fund worker benefits, such as retiree health insurance, in the same tax-preferred way that they fund pensions.”
The WSJ says, “Some states, including Florida, don’t regulate janitors insurance at all. Many states, including New York, California, Michigan, Ohio and Minnesota, require employers to get workers’ prior consent, even though many workers may not be fully aware of what they are consenting to. For example, companies in some cases give workers an incentive to agree to the janitors insurance by promising them a $1,000 or $5,000 insurance benefit for their families — without telling them that the insurance benefit that the company receives is far larger. In some states, including Illinois, ‘negative consent’ is allowed — in which employees are insured unless they act to avoid it. If employees in that state don’t write to reject the coverage within 30 days, they are covered.
The Pop/Soda/Coke Controversy
When you go to the vending machine and buy a soft drink, are you buying a “pop,” a “soda,” or a “coke” (which is what we called every cold drink where I grew up in Kentucky)?
Well, a website is trying to figure out whether where you grew up determines what you call that drink. The site, established by Alan McConchie of the California Institute of Technology, then digests your info and plots the results on an interactive map of North America. Nationally, “soda” is leading “pop” but in my home state “coke” is winning 3:1.
Parents Increase Reading to Young Children
Over the weekend, there was a good bit of reporting about the Childstats annual report that showed teens are having fewer babies, that middle school aged kids are smoking less and that most kids are healthier. And, there was one less reported and encouraging note, parents are reading to their young children more often –– in fact, a lot more often. The survey says, “The report’s educational trends show an increase in the proportion of children ages 3 to 5 who are read to by a family member every day in the last week, from 54 percent in 1999, to 58 percent in 2001.
“Reading to young children helps them to acquire language,” said Val Plisko, Ph.D, an Associate Commissioner at the National Center for Education Statistics. “Young children who are read to are also more likely to read well by the time they reach school age, and to score higher academically than are young children who are not read to” by the time they reach school age.