Scheme to locate abducted children relaunched on International Missing Children’s Day

A vital alliance which comes together to locate abducted children has today been relaunched to coincide with International Missing Children’s Day.

The Child Rescue Alert (CRA) brings together the police and press to inform the public about an abducted child with the intention of locating them quickly and bringing them to safety.

Police appeals to quickly recover children under the age of eighteen who are believed to have abducted, kidnapped or at risk of serious harm can be fast tracked through local and national media using the CRA system.

Though the CRA has been in place in England and Wales since 2005,  it will now be extended to cover Scotland and centrally coordinated by the National Policing Improvement Agency.

A similar scheme – the AMBER alert system (America’s Missing Broadcasting Emergency Response)-  has been running in the United States since 1997 and was named after nine year old Amber Hagerman who was abducted, raped and murdered in 1996.

It is estimated that around 100,000 children go missing in the UK every year, with 1,000 of those suspected to have been taken by a parent or family member.

Chief Constable Peter Neyroud, chief executive of the NPIA, said: “The decisions taken in the first few hours after a child’s disappearance are often the most vital. Through Child Rescue Alert the community is able to form a strong alliance to help in the hunt for child abductors when an alert is activated.

“It is fitting that the NPIA should relaunch CRA on International Missing Children’s Day, which forms a poignant reminder of the sense of devastation caused to the parents and families of children who go missing.”