Amber Alert System Analysis

The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, or NCMEC, states that on average seventy children are reported missing a day across the United States (Postma, 2015). Some of these children will be found safely, and will be returned to their homes from help of police and media coverage. Yet, others will go unnoticed and unreported by the media because of media biases. Children, under the age of 18, who are victims of abductions receive more media coverage when they are Caucasian than victims who are African-American.

The Amber Alert system was established in the United States in 1996. After a child has been abducted and the authorities have been notified, area police will determine if the circumstances meet the Amber Alert’s criteria.

Established in 2007, the Rilya Alert system was implemented by Janice Lowery to assist with helping minority families find their missing children (PRLog, ed., 2009). Children who have been abduction, and who meet the criteria set forth by the Amber Alert system will also receive a Rilya Alert. A considerable difference between the Amber Alert system and the Rilya Alert system is those children who would be considered runaways under the Amber Alert criteria are still eligible to receive a Rilya Alert. According to Lowery, she states that although African-American children account for 42% of child abduction victims because they are less likely to receive media coverage they are also less likely to be returned to their families safely (PRLog, ed.,

Although their story received coverage from local stations, they never received any national attention. The Chicago Police department conducted a thorough manhunt for the girls; however, they were never found (Miller, 2012). Four year-old Rilya Wilson, who was in foster care at the time, had been missing for over fifteen months before anyone noticed. Geralyn Graham, a family friend, had custody of her at the time through Florida’s Department of Children and Families Services. When scheduled for a routine visit from the state it was finally realized that the state nor did Graham had custody of the child. When questioned about Wilson’s whereabouts, Graham could not provide a definite answer (Canedy, 2002). Wilson’s story also received local coverage but it did not receive any national attention. In another case from Florida, Kamiyah Mobley or Alexis Kelli Manigo, was kidnapped from a Jacksonville, Florida hospital in 1998 by a woman pretending to be a nurse (Hanna, 2017). It was not until Mobley was reunited with her biological parents, eighteen years later in 2017, that she received national media attention. Although these victims did receive local media coverage, for the most part they did not receive the national coverage like the Caucasian