Caylee's Law Case Study

New Jersey state legislation has passed “Caylee’s Law” in response to the Casey Anthony case. Casey Anthony was acquitted of the murder charges she faced in the death of her daughter. She failed to report her daughter missing until 31 days after her disappearance (Catrocho, 2015). Caylee’s Law states, “a parent, guardian, or other person with legal custody of a child who knowingly fails to report the disappearance of the child to the appropriate law enforcement agency not more than 24 hours after becoming aware of the disappearance shall be guilty of a crime of the fourth degree, where a “child” is a person 13 years of age or younger” (Caylee’s Law of 2011). “Fourth degree crimes are punishable by imprisonment of up to 18 months, a fine of

The stakeholders who are affected by the law include children, parents and guardians of children, and law enforcement. All parties involved would benefit. With Caylee’s Law in place, no more innocent and missing children will have to go without justice and would be reported as missing in a timely manner. Parents or guardians and law enforcement will also benefit. If a child is reported under the requirements of Caylee’s Law, it will be easier to initiate the proper steps needed to find the missing child. On the other hand, it is difficult to determine who would pay a cost. If a parent fails to report their child missing, they are still paying the cost of having their child missing and will face felony charges. However, it seems that the only parent who would not report their own child missing would be the guilty parent. In this case, the guilty parent pays the cost of a crime that they have

Therefore, Caylee’s law is worth a lot in regard to finding missing children safe and alive. It allows the search process to begin much more quickly and provides an incentive for parents to report their missing children in a timely manner. National statistics show that 44 percent of children taken are killed within the first hour and 74 percent die within the first three hours (Ward, 2011). Forty percent of children were dead before they were even reported missing (Ward, 2011). In this unfortunate event, the sooner the child is reported missing the more likely law enforcement will be to gather viable evidence to provide