Amber Alert Commentary

_{This is totally off-topic}

Today I was taking a break in Starbucks when I read an article in the local (Boston) paper about the Amber Alert system. I was surprised.

For those of you who aren't up-to-date on paranoid mothers, the Amber Alert is when the government posts state-wide panicked messages about kidnapped children to every media available.

I don't like it.

Not because of what it is, but because of the fact that it doesn't work efficiently. It just makes people feel good about themselves and their politicians. Lemme explain.

The Amber Alert was designed to help find children who are kidnapped by deranged strangers with bad things in mind. However, most deranged-stranger kidnappings resolve (usually poorly) within a few hours, long before the Amber Alert is issued.

Along the same lines, the Amber Alert is usually issued for children kidnapped by family in custody battles gone awry. This is because deranged family members are far more common than deranged strangers. Unfortunately, the Amber Alert is not designed to help in these sorts of situations, so it's not very effective.

You may have seen the apologist ads for the Amber Alert. They generally say something like "95% of Amber Alerts end with the child being found." This is a little like claiming "95% of my blog posts end with the internet still being operational". The Amber Alert almost never has anything to do with the safe rescue of the child: it's usually the police tracking down the deranged family member who kidnapped the child.

I also don't like the way that Amber Alerts are posted, because they imply that the child was whisked away by a deranged stranger. This lets moms get all worked up about the number of kidnappings... but it's just a distraction. Your child is at more risk from people you know than from strangers, and thinking otherwise means your worry will be pointed in the wrong direction. (Your child is probably not even at any significant risk from people you know, either. But if you're going to worry, worry about the right things!)

Anyway, I like recovering children from kidnappers, I think it's good. But I don't really like the Amber Alert: it's just theater. It has successes, but a more carefully planned and researched system would have more successes. With, you know, less panic and misinformation.

...

I was reading this Boston paper and... they said the same thing.

I was absolutely stunned.

Okay, they didn't say the same thing. They presented a "fair and balanced" view that aired both sides of the question. But that they even mentioned my side is astonishing. It's pretty rare for a paper to question theater because, let's face it, news media is 99% theater.

I was... surprised.

Of course, the rest of the paper was basically fluff. I guess they have a quota.