Crime Prevention Against Child Abduction
Understanding and Preventing Child Abduction
Background
Child Abduction has become everyday news that we read in the newspaper nor watching on the TV News. Most of this crime event happened in the public spaces, even when the children have their chaperon(s) or guardian(s) accompanied them. Abduction can happen within few minutes when we are unconscious with the situation nor lack of attention to the children. This happened due to attention drawing or loss sight on the children to other objects. As parents we have the tendency to protect the children with all of our force, and rarely we forget that the children from their very young ages actually have the capacity to defense themselves and have a high cautious on the strangers. This can be signaled from the children behavior, in which they would often feel uncomfortable around people that they think either annoyed to them or drawn their suspicious, or in a strange setting of environment (too quite or too crowded). However, most of the time we ignored the children instinct and unaware about the situation surrounding. This article will give you a brief information about the trend of child abduction, understanding the criminals motive behind it, and give you a simple tips to prevent such criminal act.The Nature of Child Abduction
According to Crime Statistic 2017 that launched by Central Bureau for Statistic (BPS), the number of abduction is increasing every year. In 2016, there were 374 of abduction cases that were reported to the Police, among these number the highest cases found in North Sumatera (79 cases), Jakarta (67 cases), West Java (44 cases), Lampung (24 cases), and Aceh (18 cases). Jakarta and North Sumatera are two of the provinces with frequent child abduction case were found each year.In nature, there are two type of child abduction: family or non family abduction (Boudreaux et al.1999; Erikson&Friendship, 2002; Finkelhor&Ormrod, 2000; Miller et al., 2008). Commonly, what happened in the cases were in the form of Family Abduction-taking custody of child using force by family member(s). in Non-Family Abduction, this type falls into two categories: Acquaintance and Stranger. For both categories, the most of the victims were girls. Family Abduction usually happened in separated family where parents are fighting over their children custody. Acquaintance Abduction mostly involve the offender that was known to the children and family, such as neighbor, relatives, or colleagues. The motive of this type abduction is vary, however hate and rage that triggered by unresolved conflict involving both or one of the children parent, or can be a result from emotional feelings, such as: envy or jealousy. Example of child abduction done by business association due to loss from the competition at the workplace, domestic worker who felt insulted, or partners who aren't able to conceive children from their marriage.
For the Stranger Abduction, this has a wider concept and can be linked with other crime typologies, include: Organized Crime (Trafficking: Slavery, Prostitution, Pornography, Organ Transplantation, and Drug Cartel) and Child Sexual Abuse. Children who became victim under this type of abduction is considered to have monetary value-Organized Crime, and less risk-Child Sexual Abuse. It is difficult to profile the offender for the abduction related Organized Crime, despite the fact that the offender is working in a large group or organization, motivated by money (due to his/her incompetence in supporting or earning his/her own living or their family), and having no emotional feeling nor sympathy (shows that the offender is too attached with his/her organization, have a high ego, and anomic or absence of his/her societal norms). While for Child Sexual Abuse related to abduction, the motive of the offender mostly resulted from his/her failure to express his/her sexuality needs to the partners, having sexual deviance behavior, or traumatized from his/her childhood experience. The offender that falls under both categories have a basic knowledge on their potential victims, they have identify and profiling the victims, weighing the risk, using the environmental setting, and understand and aware the situation to do their act.
Law Enforcement and Social Control on Child Abduction
Media has a significant role in deterring the offender. Instead of building image and focusing on the crime, the media should enable to provide lesson learnt from the cases that they covered. Understanding the crime motive, identify potential suspect, providing safety tips, and encouraging community policing strategy can be a good themes to be highlighted in their news. By taking example from US, where they have Amber Alert-child abduction alert system and Adam Walsh Act-an act to protect children from sexual exploitation and violent crime, shows the seriousness of the US Government to respond on Child Abduction case. In Indonesia, this legal procedure and law do not exist. Despite the fact that Child Abduction is mentioned under Law No. 34 Year 2014 j.o No 23 Year 2002, Article 83 that is specific mentioned about the amount of fine. Yet, no detail explanation is giving concerning its influence to minimize the potential of offender to relapse by registering the offender crime records to be accessible for the community in order to enable to tracking his/her movement, establishing of child abuse reporting center (note that the number of child abduction in the BPS Statistic left dark figure of crime due to unreported cases), and developing community alert system of potential perpetrators. However, this kind of procedure will demolish the Presumption of Innocence that applies in the Criminal Justice System.Another example can also be taking from the establishment of global missing children network or GMCN. It launched in 1998 as a joint venture of the International Centre for Missing & Exploited Children (ICMEC) and NCMEC, the Global Missing Children's Network (GMCN) is a network of countries that connect, share best practices, and disseminate information and images of missing children to improve the effectiveness of missing children investigations. The Network has 22 member countries: Albania, Argentina, Australia, Belarus, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Poland, Romania, Russia, Serbia, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the US.Each country can access a customizable website platform, and can enter missing children information into a centralized, multilingual database that has photos of and information about missing children, which can be viewed and distributed to assist in location and recovery efforts. GMCN staff train new countries joining the Network, and provide an annual member conference sponsored by Motorola Solutions Foundation at which best practices, current issues, trends, policies, procedures, and possible solutions are discussed.
In Indonesia, child abduction is handling based on individual report that recorder and handle by the Police Department. An example on how missing children network can be adopted in this country can be seen by the establishment of Telepon Sahabat Anak 129 (TSA 129), a children’s helpline that began in 2005. It is the product of an MOU among various Indonesian governmental bodies.149 TSA 129 accepts calls from children concerning emergency situations such as economic and sexual exploitation, drug abuse, alcohol/ psychotropic/ other addictive substances (drugs), abduction, sale and trafficking, physical and mental violence, and abuse and neglect.150 TSA 129 then refers the child to counseling.151 The TSA 129 Helpline also collaborates with various ministries to build awareness of violence against children,152 and assists with reunifying children with their families after natural disasters. Despite of slow response of the Government of Indonesia to Child Abduction case, The International Centre for Missing and Exploited Children described in its 2016 Missing Children in Southeast Asia Review Indonesia as is the only country that has measures in place for entry into and exit out of the country to help prevent international child abductions.
Prevent by Sharing, Teaching, and Practicing
Teaching children to be defensive and increase their self awareness can be used as one of the examples of crime prevention against child abduction. At the earliest age of 5 or 6 years, by taking the children to take martial arts will teach them how to defense themselves from attempted abduction. Judo, Karate, or Aikido are several options on the available type of martial arts that can be taught to children at their young ages. Have you ever think on the usefulness of a whistle?. When abduction happens, children who are not trained in martial arts have limited force to defense themselves from the attack, by blowing whistle, the children can give signals to the people nearby that bad thing is happening, and he or she can get immediate help from them. In this high technology era, most of family will give each of their children an expansive tablet, android nor apple. Sadly that this device is not well functioned to educate their children, and only used to entertain them with games, videos, and social media which actually lead in giving opportunity to be potential targeted victims by the offender. I would recommend for parents to download the Child Safety Stranger Danger Awareness in Google Play. This is a fun media for children to prevent and defense themselves from abduction.
or other option in teaching the children of No Touching for strangers. Another option also can be download for the children is the ISafe tips from the same platform.
Above all the tips, the utmost important thing is to befriend with your children and have your own quality time to share story through two way communication. Bed time stories or local knowledge such as folklore and fairy tales can also be used to introduce them the concept of Stranger Danger. As Child Abduction mostly also happen in public spaces, in the context of neighborhood, having a community policy or neighborhood watch or local surveillance mechanism can be an effective in limiting the intrusion of stranger to the hood. Communicate and share this idea to your local leader and ask for the support from local enforcement will ensure the safety of your environment and minimize the potential of abduction happen.
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