Someone is reported missing every 90 seconds in the UK.
- 170,000 people are reported missing every year
- There are 353,000 reported missing incidents every year
How many people go missing each year?
- Missing people: of the 170,000 people reported missing nearly 98,000 are adults and more than 70,000 are children
- Missing incidents: of the 353,000 reported incidents, more than 137,000 incidents are adults and almost 215,000 incidents are children
- Looked after children are at high risk of being reported missing. 1 in 10 looked after children are reported missing compared to 1 in 200 children. Looked after children who are reported missing will be reported on average 6 times
Most of the people who are reported missing may be experiencing some kind of vulnerability or risk. This can be exacerbated by being missing, particularly where someone goes missing more than once.
The were created from the statistics in the National Crime Agency report 2019-20. The figures used are the number of incidents (I.e. the total number of reports of someone going missing, including missing incidents) and the number of individuals (I.e. number of individual adults and children reported missing, which does not reflect repeat missing).We have made some estimations for individual missing people in Scotland, as those figures are not included in the NCA report. [1]
The Golden hour principle
The principle that effective early action can result in securing significant material that would otherwise be lost to the investigation, we’ve seen already in 2023 that person can be missing for sometime before appeals for assistance from the public are made, the time between the appeal being launched and the public engagement can be up to 48 hours and this is clearly 47 hours longer than the “golden hour”. [2]
Developing the system
Our intention was to produce an accessible resource to assist police investigators with investigations and evidence gathering where an incident required the collection of CCTV, Video Doorbell footage and Dashcam footage, these would normally be required via a public appeal.
We took 3 incidents ranging from murder, missing person and anti social behaviour (ASB) that took place within 1 week period and tracked the time from alleged offence to appeal to the public for support of footage, we then sought advice from a working good of training and accredited investigators, barristers and KC’s members, each giving us invaluable insight to their individual area of expertise and combined with the tracking of time spent we were able to create a process to not only save time within the golden hours of incident but also reducing costs spent.
Once the data collection portal was created as management system was produced to give an investigator the ability to enter a crime reference number, specify an area and radius and then display who has devices within that area, then have the ability contact owners of devices to request footage directly and give them a dedicated link to upload the footage, combined with a MG11 statement of them evidencing said footage to the authorised investigator.
Mass or individual contact could be made via email or text message (SMS), this process will speed up the process apposed to using social media to call to the general public.
Not only can this be used for reactive police but proactive police work such as researching an area, this can be done via the doorvue system as we are compliant with the rules outlined within Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 (RIPA).
The doorvue registration is FREE to register your device and this be accessed via: https://app.doorvue.com/
Written by Andrew Robbins .JP
[1] Download the report here: NCA Annual Report 2019-20
[2] Further information can be found on: https://www.college.police.uk/app/investigation/investigation-process