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25 Facts About Missing Persons

Here at Investigation Hotline, locating missing persons is one of our core competencies. We have over thirty years of experience finding missing people, whether it is a spouse, child or loved one. Below, we’ve compiled twenty startling facts about missing persons.

  • In the United States, a child goes missing every 40 seconds.
  • 45,609 children went missing in Canada in 2017.
  • Due to panic and shock, it can take up to two hours to get information about a missing child from a parent.
  • More than 800,000 children go missing in the U.S. every year.
  • After being listed missing for seven years, a person can be declared as “legally dead” or absentia. In rare cases, such as for natural disasters and terrorist attacks, this time can be shortened.
  • In 1980, less than 150,000 people were reported missing per year. That number has climbed to 900,000.
  • The Missing Children Society of Canada receives almost 800 calls per year regarding missing children.
  • In the majority of jurisdictions around the world, missing persons are a low priority for police. Homicides, rapes, robberies, assaults, traffic issues and crime prevention take priority.
  • Coroner’s offices in America hold more than 40,000 sets of unidentified remains.
  • In 2010, the National Crime Information Center reported that 355,243 women and 337,660 men went missing.
  • 58% of adult missing persons reports involve males in Canada.
  • 12. Worldwide, estimates indicate that eight million children go missing every year.
  • The U.S. AMBER alert system has been replicated in 18 countries across the world.
  • The majority of adult missing persons cases involve individuals with drug and alcohol addiction, psychiatric problems, and elderly suffering from dementia.
  • 83,000 Americans have been to deemed to have gone missing from World War II, the Cold War, the Korean War, Vietnam War and the 1991 Gulf War.
  • Of the sixteen million soldiers who served for the U.S. in WWII, 73,000 are still unaccounted for.
  • 75% of Canadian missing children’s cases were due to runaways.
  • Police in the United States are working approximately 100,000 missing persons cases at any given time.
  • Police advise that parents of missing children be on alert for psychics claiming to have knowledge of a loved one’s fate.
  • Family abductions are the most common type of child abductions, with fathers being responsible 53% of the time.
  • The AMBER alert was named after 9 year old Amber Hagerman who was abducted and murdered in 1996.
  • Of all missing children reports in Canada, 58% involve females.
  • Enough children are abducted in the United States every two hours that they could fill a school bus.
  • Children from minority families account for 65% of all non family abductions, with African Americans making up 42%.
  • Across Europe, the phone number 116 000 can be called to report a missing child.