Reporting missing children to the police: A qualitative exploration of the factors associated with contacting or not contacting the police
| Author | Daniel Hunt,Maria Ioannou,John Synnott |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/0032258X211023546 |
| Published date | 01 December 2022 |
| Date | 01 December 2022 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Article
Reporting missing children
to the police: A qualitative
exploration of the factors
associated with contacting
or not contacting the
police
Daniel Hunt , Maria Ioannou and John Synnott
School of Human and Health Sciences, Department of Psychology,
University of Huddersfield, Huddersfield, UK
Abstract
Releasing missing person appeals is common practice when someone goes missing.
Despite the wide-scale usage, the understanding on appeal effectiveness remains under-
researched. This article aims to identify the factors that influence the likelihood of
members of the public to report a child that has gone missing to the police and requires
police assistance. Participant responses (n¼252) were qualitatively analysed identifying
four factors that positively influenced the likelihood of contacting the police, and two
factors that negatively influenced the likelihood of not contacting the police to report the
child. Practical implications are also discussed.
Keywords
Missing children, police reporting, missing persons appeal, contacting police
A missing child represents a significant societal problem which raises concern for that
child’s welfare (APPG, 2016; Lampinen et al., 2012a). In 2019/2020, over 325,000 inci-
dents were reported which is equivalent to one report every 90 seconds (Missing People,
2018; NCA, 2021). Of these incidents, approximately 61%relate to missing children
(NCA, 2021). In this situation, it is common practice for the police and the family and
Corresponding author:
Daniel Hunt, School of Human and Health Sciences, Department of Psychology, Edith Key Building, University
of Huddersfield, Huddersfield HD1 3DH, UK.
Email: d.hunt2@hud.ac.uk
The Police Journal:
Theory, Practice and Principles
ªThe Author(s) 2021
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DOI: 10.1177/0032258X211023546
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2022, Vol. 95(4) 657–673
658 The Police Journal: Theory, Practice and Principles 95(4)
friends of the missingchild to release missing person appeals throughthe media to request
help from members of the public in finding the missing child (Lampinen et al., 2012b;
Lampinen and Moore,2016; Sweeney and Lampinen, 2012). However, despite the impor-
tance and wide-scale usage of missing person appeals, no previous research study has
explored the decision-making processes of members of the general public to report chil-
dren to the police following an observed missing child appeal and positive identification.
The media can be a vital resource for law enforcement as well as the family and
friends of the missing child as the media has the potential to access further witnesses who
may hold significant information concerning the missing child (Fyfe et al., 2015; Taylor
et al., 2013). Likewise, individuals who do not hold any information on the missing child
but interact with the media frequently may feel compelled to help by sharing the appeal
with their own social media followers (Drivsholm et al., 2017). The number of individ-
uals that the original missing child appeal could reach would, therefore, increase signif-
icantly in a short time frame compared to offline approaches such as door to door
enquiries (Hunt et al., 2019). Whil st the wide usage and dissemination of publicity
appeals ranges from newspaper notices to posters and websites to name a few (Driv-
sholm et al., 2017), researchers (e.g., Hunt et al., 2020; Juncu et al., 2020; Lampinen and
Moore, 2016) have only recently begun exploring how effective these appeals are in
being able to help locate a missing child.
Stages of appeal effectiveness
Lampinen et al. (2016) argue that whilst the ability to disseminate missing person
appeals widely and quickly have a great deal of importance, there are a series of under-
lying stages which must be followed for a missing person appeal to be effective. First,
appeals must be disseminated widely enough to progress to the second stage that requires
members of the public to provide their full attention to the appeal (Lampinen et al.,
2016). Third, the missing individual must then be encountered followed by, fourth, the
ability to accurately attend to, and identify, the face of that missing individual (Lampinen
et al., 2016). Fifth, the now-identified missing individual must trigger the public’s
recollection of the missing persons appeal they observed previously before entering the
final stage which is for that member of public to be confident enough to contact the
police (Lampinen et al., 2016). Thus, according to Lampinen et al. (2016), only when all
of these individual stages are accurately completed can the appeal be identified as being
effective. Failure to progress from one stage to the next stage will result in the non-
successful identification of the missing individual and therefore an ineffective missing
persons appeal (Lampinen et al., 2016).
Following this model, researchers have only recently started to explore appeal effec-
tiveness. For instance, Lampinen and Moore (2016) examined the attention and encoun-
tering stages by analysing data from 465 student participants who were randomly
assigned to observe either three mock missing person videos across 3 days, or just one
mock missing person video on the last day of a 3-day event. After observing the appeals,
participants were informed that an individual from the missin g person video appeal
would be walking around the university campus and were asked to inform the research-
ers to report the individual if they encounter them (Lampinen and Moore, 2016). The
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