Juvenile Kidnaping—A Rare Occurrence

Three Types of Perpetrators

In contrast, the criminal kidnaping of juveniles, as recorded by police in the NIBRS jurisdictions, is divided into three relatively large categories: family kidnaping (49 percent), acquaintance kidnaping (27 percent), and stranger kidnaping (24 percent) (figure 1). Compared with all violent crimes against juveniles, kidnaping has substantially higher percentages of both family and stranger perpetrators, but the high percentage of acquaintance kidnapings is striking given previous characterizations of this crime that have emphasized only the family and stranger elements.

In the NIBRS jurisdictions, family kidnaping perpetrators are usually parents (80 percent), almost always adults (98 percent), and often female (43 percent) (figures 2 and 3). Although not a majority of family kidnaping perpetrators, females commit a substantially larger portion of the family abductions than they do of acquaintance abductions (16 percent), stranger abductions (5 percent), or violent crimes in general (24 percent).

Stranger perpetrators are predominately males (95 percent) and predominately adults (90 percent) (figures 2 and 3). Acquaintance kidnaping has the largest proportion of juvenile offenders (30 percent) and a somewhat higher percentage of female offenders than stranger kidnaping (16 percent and 5 percent, respectively). Data from the NIBRS jurisdictions provide limited information about the characteristics of some offenders in the acquaintance category. Eighteen percent are categorized as boyfriend, which suggests a quite distinct dynamic, whereas two other subdivisions—friend (7 percent) and acquaintance (73 percent)—although more ambiguous, suggest different degrees of intimacy or familiarity.

Family perpetrators kidnap males and females in approximately equal proportions (figure 3). Acquaintance perpetrators kidnap substantially more females than males (72 percent and 28 percent, respectively). Stranger perpetrators also kidnap more females than males but not quite so disproportionately as acquaintances (64 percent and 36 percent, respectively).

Victim Age Patterns

The three categories of kidnaping also have distinct patterns with respect to the age of victims. In the NIBRS incident reports, family kidnaping has its peak occurrence for children under age 6 (43 percent), while a large majority of acquaintance kidnaping victimizes teenagers (youth ages 12 to 17) (71 percent). Stranger kidnaping is more equally split between teenage and elementary school-age victims (57 percent and 32 percent, respectively). However, the risks for children of different ages appear to have a complex interplay (figure 4). Children under the age of 6 are primarily targets of family kidnaping, which peaks at about age 2 and declines thereafter. The risk of kidnaping by a stranger is comparatively low for preschoolers but rises throughout the elementary school years and reaches its peak around age 15. Acquaintance kidnaping is the predominant problem for teenagers, displacing stranger kidnaping as their biggest threat.

Location

NIBRS provides only crude data about the location of crimes, particularly a crime like kidnaping that may have an originating, intermediate, and destination locale (for example, a child taken from a street, driven in a car, brought into a residence, and then raped). NIBRS allows multiple-location coding for multiple-offense crimes, but only 1 percent of incidents involving kidnaping have multiple locations recorded in NIBRS data. The information on location does, however, show clear-cut associations between the offender's relationship to the victim and the location of the kidnaping.

In the NIBRS jurisdictions, family kidnaping, consistent with the stereotype, is associated primarily with homes and residences (84 percent) (figure 5). Stranger kidnaping, by contrast, is associated primarily with outdoor locations (58 percent)—streets, highways, parks, waterways, and other public areas. Like family kidnaping, most acquaintance kidnaping takes place at homes and residences (63 percent), but unlike family kidnaping, a substantial percentage of acquaintance kidnaping also occurs in outside locations (22 percent). It is important to note that schools are an unusual site for abduction, even family abduction (only 5 percent of family, 4 percent of acquaintance, and 3 percent of stranger kidnaping occur at school).

Additional Offenses

In other studies, nonfamily kidnaping is generally associated with other offenses, such as robbery or sexual assault, and is in fact a means of facilitating those offenses. One advantage of NIBRS over UCR is its ability to code multiple crimes associated with a single incident. Overall, 19 percent of the juvenile kidnaping reported in NIBRS jurisdictions is associated with another violent crime. This makes it the most common crime to be paired with an additional offense. These additional offenses provide some perspective on the motives of kidnaping offenders.

Most additional offenses associated with kidnaping occur in conjunction with acquaintance and stranger kidnaping, but the types of offenses vary somewhat according to the gender of the victim (figure 6). For female victims, sex crimes were the predominant adjunct to kidnaping, occurring in 23 percent of the kidnapings by acquaintances and 14 percent of the kidnapings by strangers reported to NIBRS in 1997. For male victims, robbery and assault were the additional offenses most likely to accompany kidnaping, although some sex offenses also occurred.

Family kidnaping tends not to be associated with any other crime. In this type of kidnaping, none of the offenses against boys and only 5 percent of the offenses against girls were linked to an additional violent crime.

Weapon Usage

For the most part in NIBRS jurisdictions, kidnaping is a weaponless crime (figure 7). Approximately 14 percent of acquaintance kidnapings and about 23 percent of stranger abductions involved weapons, mostly guns. The use of weapons in family abductions was quite rare (less than 2 percent).

Injuries and Deaths

Injuries occurred in only 12 percent of all kidnapings recorded by police in participating jurisdictions. They were most frequent in acquaintance abductions (24 percent) and least frequent in family abductions (4 percent) (figure 8). Major injuries (for example, severe lacerations, broken bones, unconsciousness) were extremely rare, occurring in only 2 percent of all kidnapings. Only one fatal outcome to a kidnaping was recorded in the 1997 NIBRS data. When interpreting figure 8, however, it must be kept in mind that these abductions were not necessarily crime episodes of long duration or ones in which a child was officially declared missing. They could have involved episodes during which a child was transported a short distance or into a building or car in order to accomplish a sexual assault or robbery. NIBRS has no usable information about whether the child victim was at any time in the episode reported missing or about the distance or duration of the kidnaping.

Time of Day

Rates for all crimes against children peak in the afternoon (Snyder and Sickmund, 1999), and kidnaping is no exception: 41 percent of all juvenile kidnapings in NIBRS jurisdictions occur during afternoon hours (noon to 6 p.m.). The main difference among the three types of kidnaping is that acquaintance and stranger kidnaping are somewhat more likely than family kidnaping to occur in the evening (6 p.m. to midnight) or nighttime (midnight to 6 a.m.) hours (46 percent, 41 percent, and 30 percent, respectively) (figure 9).