For the statistically inept, and those who like to be scared shitless because they don’t understand numbers, the FBI has just released its very first App, the “Child ID App”.
Amusingly the FBI uses some numbers that I’ve seen before to scare the shit out of idiots:
A child goes missing every 40 seconds. Many never return home.
Unlike the last time I tackled this subject (when I didn’t have time to do any real research on the issue), this time I have Free Range Kids, the premiere blog addressing the issue of overly “safe” childhoods, which did a little digging and found that:
an estimated 115 children and youth were the victims of a stereotypical kidnapping in the study year, and that the true number was somewhere between 60 and 170 (this range represents the 95-percent confidence interval around the estimate). This estimate is consistent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI’s) estimates of the number of abductions by strangers in which, because of their seriousness or duration, Federal law enforcement becomes involved (M. Heimbach, personal communication, August 22, 2002).
So much for 800,000 kids going missing every year.
And shame on the FBI for scare-mongering.
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