A few weeks ago, I experienced a situation familiar to many Canadians, described in this article from Jonathan Jarry of McGill University’s Office for Science and Society:
On Sunday, March 22nd of this year, a large swath of the population in Quebec was woken up at 4:25 as cell phones lit up and screamed. An Amber alert had been broadcast. Less than four hours later, the two missing children were thankfully found, unharmed, and the alert was cancelled.
Thankfully, my iPhone respects silent mode and only vibrated forcefully, but apparently not all phone brands respect this setting. Unlike in the United States, Amber alerts to cell phones in Canada cannot be disabled.
The statistics regarding child abductions and Amber alerts discussed in this article are equal parts comforting and disconcerting. For example, most children who are the subject of an Amber alert are recovered unharmed:
a study published a decade ago and looking at 448 Amber alerts in the U.S. revealed that over 95% of the children had been recovered alive and nearly 90% recovered alive and without physical harm, sexual abuse, of withholding of needed medical care during the abduction. Even when Amber alerts don’t trigger a helpful tip, the child is usually found.
Other research from the United States indicates the Amber alert plays a part in the recovery about 25% of the time. However, they may be issued too late to prevent the worst outcomes:
According to an often-quoted 1997 report from the Washington Office of the Attorney General and the U.S. Department of Justice, three quarters of the children who are both abducted and murdered are killed within the first three hours of the kidnapping. That earlier USA Today investigation revealed that in 2021 less than a third of Amber alerts had been triggered within three hours of the child going missing. In fact, on average, children who are recovered after what police deems a “successful Amber alert” are found fifteen and a half hours later.
As is the norm, the data available for evaluation of programs like the Amber alert are sparse and cobbled together, and we seem to have nothing more than anecdotes available for the Canadian context.
As for that Amber alert that woke me up a few Sundays ago? It was issued at 4:25 and cancelled by 7:55. According to the Quebec provincial police: “It was information received from the public that allowed investigators to locate where they were”. So it’s possible that that the right person saw that 4 am alert and phoned in a tip.