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Child Abduction, AMBER Alert, and Crime Control Theater

NCJ Number
223310
Journal
Criminal Justice Review Volume: 33 Issue: 2 Dated: June 2008 Pages: 159-176
Author(s)
Timothy Griffin; Monica K. Miller
Date Published
June 2008
Length
18 pages
Annotation
This article examines the future of the America’s Missing Broadcast Emergency Response (AMBER) Alert system and the concept of crime control theater (a socially constructed “solution” to a socially constructed problem) of which AMBER Alert is one example.
Abstract
The publicity and horror associated with extreme cases of child kidnapping create a socially constructed perception that such crimes are pervasive and can induce “moral panic” about predatory threats to children. This often leads to arguably irrational and excessive policy responses. The America’s Missing Broadcast Emergency Response (AMBER) Alert system is a case in point. Aside from limited empirical evidence that suggests that AMBER Alerts are not usually successful at “saving lives,” there are a number of theoretical considerations that should at the very least incline policymakers and the media to be wary of overselling the benefits of the system: (1) AMBER Alert is an ambitious attempt to beat very long odds in extremely menacing cases, requiring nearly immediate synchronization of a number of unlikely events for the system to work as intended; (2) an apparently unavoidable dilemma is created when public officials wrestle with whether to issue an AMBER Alert in particular cases, due to often insufficient information; and (3) the entire theoretical model of AMBER Alert is probably mistaken with the system premised on the notion that faster response can save lives which implies slow response leads to death. Thus, the concept of crime control theater, of which AMBER Alert is an example, can provide public officials and criminal justice scholars a cogent conceptual framework with which to identify intuitively appealing but faulty response to crime made in the hysteria of moral panic about perceived criminal threats. Notes, references