BILL ANALYSIS
SENATE COMMITTEE ON PUBLIC SAFETY
Senator Mark Leno, Chair A
2009-2010 Regular Session B
1
0
2
AB 1022 (Nava and Cook) 2
As Amended May 18, 2010
Hearing date: June 22, 2010
Penal Code
AA:mc
MISSING CHILDREN:
ESTABLISHMENT OF RAPID RESPONSE TEAM WITHIN
THE DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE
HISTORY
Source: More Kids
Prior Legislation: None
Support: Crime Victims United of California
Opposition:None known
Assembly Floor Vote: Not Relevant
KEY ISSUE
SHOULD THE CALIFORNIA MISSING CHILDREN RAPID RESPONSE TEAM BE
CREATED WITHIN THE DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE, AS SPECIFIED?
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PURPOSE
The purpose of this bill is to create the California Missing
Children Rapid Response Team within the California Department of
Justice, as specified.
Current law requires the Attorney General to "establish and
maintain the Violent Crime Information Center to assist in the
identification and the apprehension of persons responsible for
specific violent crimes and for the disappearance and
exploitation of persons, particularly
children and dependent adults. The center shall establish and
maintain programs which include, but are not limited to, all of
the following: developing violent offender profiles; assisting
local law enforcement agencies and county district attorneys by
providing investigative information on persons responsible for
specific violent crimes and missing person cases; providing
physical description information and photographs, if available,
of missing persons to county district attorneys, nonprofit
missing persons organizations, and schools; and providing
statistics on missing dependent adults and on missing children,
including, as may be applicable, family
abductions, nonfamily abductions, voluntary missing, and lost
children or lost dependent adults." (Penal Code 14200.)
Current law further requires the Attorney General to establish
within the center and maintain "an online, automated computer
system designed to effect an immediate law enforcement response
to reports of missing persons," and requires the Attorney
General to make information available to law enforcement
agencies regarding active files maintained pursuant to these
provisions, as specified. (Penal Code 14201.)
This bill would create within the Department of Justice ("DOJ")
the California Missing Children Rapid Response Team, which is
hereby established for all of the following purposes:
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(1) To assist law enforcement agencies, at their request,
with the timely search and
recovery of at-risk abducted children.
(2) To maintain up-to-date knowledge and expertise of those
protocols, best practices, and
technologies that are most effective for recovering missing
children in a timely
manner.
This bill would require that the team "utilize existing
resources and expertise within the Attorney General's office to
the maximum extent possible to accomplish its purposes."
RECEIVERSHIP/OVERCROWDING CRISIS AGGRAVATION IMPLICATIONS
The severe prison overcrowding problem California has
experienced for the last several years has not been solved. In
December of 2006 plaintiffs in two federal lawsuits against the
Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation sought a
court-ordered limit on the prison population pursuant to the
federal Prison Litigation Reform Act. On January 12, 2010, a
federal three-judge panel issued an order requiring the state to
reduce its inmate population to 137.5 percent of design capacity
-- a reduction of roughly 40,000 inmates -- within two years.
In a prior, related 184-page Opinion and Order dated August 4,
2009, that court stated in part:
"California's correctional system is in a tailspin,"
the state's independent oversight agency has reported.
. . . (Jan. 2007 Little Hoover Commission Report,
"Solving California's Corrections Crisis: Time Is
Running Out"). Tough-on-crime politics have increased
the population of California's prisons dramatically
while making necessary reforms impossible. . . . As a
result, the state's prisons have become places "of
extreme peril to the safety of persons" they house, .
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. . (Governor Schwarzenegger's Oct. 4, 2006 Prison
Overcrowding State of Emergency Declaration), while
contributing little to the safety of California's
residents, . . . . California "spends more on
corrections than most countries in the world," but the
state "reaps fewer public safety benefits." . . . .
Although California's existing prison system serves
neither the public nor the inmates well, the state has
for years been unable or unwilling to implement the
reforms necessary to reverse its continuing
deterioration. (Some citations omitted.)
. . .
The massive 750% increase in the California prison
population since the mid-1970s is the result of
political decisions made over three decades, including
the shift to inflexible determinate sentencing and the
passage of harsh mandatory minimum and three-strikes
laws, as well as the state's counterproductive parole
system. Unfortunately, as California's prison
population has grown, California's political
decision-makers have failed to provide the resources
and facilities required to meet the additional need
for space and for other necessities of prison
existence. Likewise, although state-appointed experts
have repeatedly provided numerous methods by which the
state could safely reduce its prison population, their
recommendations have been ignored, underfunded, or
postponed indefinitely. The convergence of
tough-on-crime policies and an unwillingness to expend
the necessary funds to support the population growth
has brought California's prisons to the breaking
point. The state of emergency declared by Governor
Schwarzenegger almost three years ago continues to
this day, California's prisons remain severely
overcrowded, and inmates in the California prison
system continue to languish without constitutionally
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adequate medical and mental health care.<1>
The court stayed implementation of its January 12, 2010, ruling
pending the state's appeal of the decision to the U.S. Supreme
Court. On Monday, June 14, 2010, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed
to hear the state's appeal in this case.
This bill does not aggravate the prison overcrowding crisis
described above.
COMMENTS
1. Stated Need for This Bill
The author states:
Every year an estimated 800,000 children are reported
missing, more than 105,000 in California alone. This
equates to more than 2,000 children each day. A large
proportion of those are abducted by non-family members
under suspicious or unknown circumstances. A number
of high-profile missing children cases within the last
decade have brought to light the need to bring
California's laws and processes for missing person
response and recovery in the 21st century.
In 2009 in California, 105,171 children were reported
missing, according to the Department of Justice. Of
that number:
o 47,407 were male;
o 57,764 were female;
o 100,043 were determined to be runaways;
----------------------
<1> Three Judge Court Opinion and Order, Coleman v.
Schwarzenegger, Plata v. Schwarzenegger, in the United States
District Courts for the Eastern District of California and the
Northern District of California United States District Court
composed of three judges pursuant to Section 2284, Title 28
United States Code (August 4, 2009).
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o 268 were reported "lost;"
o 45 were abducted by strangers;
o 1,210 went missing at the hands of a family
member;
o 349 were abducted under suspicious
circumstances; and
o 3,244 went missing under unknown
circumstances.
According to a 1997 study, Case Management for Missing
Children Homicide Investigation, the murder of an
abducted child is a rare event ? yet 76.2% of abducted
children who are murdered are dead within three hours
of the abduction.
California's AMBER Alert system was established on
July 24, 2003 (AB 415, Runner, 2002). The criteria
necessary for the activation of an AMBER Alert in
California is very specific. In fact, only .04% of
all missing children qualify for an AMBER Alert.
Criteria include the following and must all be met:
o Local law enforcement belief that an
abduction occurred;
o Child must be 17 years of age or younger;
o Child must be at risk of serious bodily harm
or death;
o Sufficient descriptive information about the
child and/or abductor must exist to disseminate to the
public;
Since 2002, there were a total of 157 AMBER Alert
Activations representing 205 victims abducted - all of
whom were safely recovered or accounted for (it is
assumed that unrecovered children are safe with
relatives in a country without an extradition policy).
The California Child Abduction Task Force, currently
under the jurisdiction of the California Emergency
Management Agency (CalEMA), has a mission to "reduce
the risk and incidence of child abduction, and to
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increase the effectiveness of a multi-disciplinary
response by enhancing skills, knowledge, and awareness
of child abduction." . . .
Child Abduction Response Teams (CARTs) are beginning
to take shape nationwide to respond quickly to
incidents of missing and abducted children. CARTs
consist of law enforcement investigators, AMBER Alert
coordinators, policy makers, search and rescue
professionals, crime intelligence analysts, victim
service providers, and other inter-agency resources.
Teams exist within California in the Los Angeles and
San Diego areas. While CART Teams are proving to be
effective multijurisdictional resources, their
establishment across California may prove difficult
with the state's ongoing $20 billion budget crises.
The creation of one or two similar teams on a
statewide level may prove to be a more cost-effective
method by which to rapidly recover missing children.
With this in mind, AB 1022 establishes the California
Missing Child Rapid Response Team within the Attorney
General's Office to assist law enforcement agencies,
at the request of said agencies, with the timely
search and recovery of at-risk abducted children.
Under the measure, the Team will be required to
maintain up-to-date knowledge and expertise of
protocols, best practices and technologies that are
most effective for recovering missing children in a
timely manner. AB 1022 seeks for the Team to utilize
existing resources and expertise within the Attorney
General's office to the extent possible. . . .
2. What This Bill Would Do
As explained above, this bill would create the California
Missing Children Rapid Response Team within the California
Department of Justice. This team would be established for all
of the following purposes:
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(1) To assist law enforcement agencies, at their request,
with the timely search and
recovery of at-risk abducted children.
(2) To maintain up-to-date knowledge and expertise of those
protocols, best practices, and
technologies that are most effective for recovering missing
children in a timely
manner."
3. Existing DOJ "Missing and Unidentified Persons Unit" and
"Child Abduction Response Teams"
The Department of Justice provides the following information on
its website:
The Missing and Unidentified Persons Unit in the
California Department of Justice assists law
enforcement and criminal justice agencies in locating
missing persons and identifying unknown live and
deceased persons through the comparison of physical
characteristics, fingerprints and dental/body X-rays.
Subscribe to receive Missing Persons Bulletins in your
e-mail inbox.
In California, a missing person is someone whose
whereabouts is unknown to the reporting party. This
includes any child who may have run away, been taken
involuntary or may be in need of assistance. It
includes a child illegally taken, held or hidden by a
parent or non-parent family member (See California
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Penal Code Sections 277-280 ).
There is NO waiting period for reporting a person
missing. All California police and sheriffs'
departments must accept any report, including a report
by telephone, of a missing person, including runaways,
without delay and will give priority to the handling
of the report.
Schools are part of the network to help find missing
children, not only through notices required to be
given to a public school district or private school
within 10 days of a child's disappearance but also
through use of our Missing Person Bulletin.
By making photographs of missing persons available, we
seek to aid in the identification and recovery of
missing persons. According to the National Center for
Missing and Exploited Children , one in six missing
children are recovered as a direct result of someone
recognizing their photo and notifying authorities. We
also offer resources on this website for locating
missing persons and safeguarding your children.
The following offers a summary of some of our
programs. Further information is available by
selecting the program categories on the left menu.
Missing Persons Search. A searchable database of
missing persons allows you to look for a missing
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person by name, description, county and several other
categories.
Missing Children Clearinghouse. The Clearinghouse
provides a nationwide, toll-free hotline to receive
tips on the whereabouts of missing persons. Call
toll-free: 1-800-222-FIND (1-800-222-3463)
Featured Missing Children and Adult Cases. The number
of active missing person cases averages around 25,000
in California. The Featured Missing Children and
Featured Missing Adults highlight cases where
photographs have been submitted by law enforcement for
use in accordance with laws and policies for sharing
the image of the missing person. To have a photograph
added, family members of a missing person should
submit their photographs to the law enforcement agency
taking the missing person report.
Featured Unidentified Person. There are currently
over 2,100 reports of unidentified persons in our
automated database. Periodically, we will be
providing photographs or drawings of selected
cases.<2>
The author and/or members of the Committee may wish to discuss
how the team proposed by this bill would differ from the
existing Missing and Unidentified Persons Unit in DOJ.
As noted by the author, regional "Child Abduction Response
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<2> http://ag.ca.gov/missing/.
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Teams" also have been created in California.<3> California also
has a Child Abduction Task Force, originally under the Office of
Emergency Services and now under CalEMA pursuant to a
consolidation of OES and Homeland Security. CalEMA also appears
to be the state's lead agency for federal Children's Justice Act
funds, and has administered child abduction training requests
for applications.<4>
While not an issue directly raised by this bill, in light of its
goals, the authors may wish to consider whether the goals of
this bill could be furthered by consolidating the state's
efforts relating to missing persons and child abduction under
one state entity.
4. FBI "CARD" Teams
According to its website, the Federal Bureau of Investigation
("FBI") has established "Child Abduction Rapid Deployment" teams
which appear to be similar to the teams proposed by this bill.
The website describes in part:
Child abductions by strangers are often complex and
high-profile cases. And time is of the essence.
That's why we've added another tool in our Crimes
Against Children program that helps our local field
offices in these cases: our Child Abduction Rapid
Deployment, or CARD, teams.
Here's the "who, what, when, and where" of these teams:
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<3> See California Child Abduction Task Force Summary Report
Fourth Edition (2008), available online at:
http://www.oes.ca.gov/
WebPage/oeswebsite.nsf/PDF/California%20Child%20Abduction%20Task%
20
Force:%202008%20Summary%20Report/$file/Child%20Abduction%20Summar
y%202008.pdf.
<4> See
http://www.oes.ca.gov/WebPage/oeswebsite.nsf/OESLevsPDF/2010%20Ch
ild%20Abduction%
20Training%20Program%20(AC)/$file/AC10%20RFA.pdf.
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WHO makes up a CARD team? FBI agents with in-depth
experience and a proven track record in crimes against
children investigations, especially cases where a child
has been abducted by someone other than a family member.
Once selected, team members go through extensive
training. Each team has a designated leader. The teams
work closely with behavioral analysts, National Center
for the Analysis of Violent Crime (NCAVC) coordinators,
and Crimes Against Children coordinators.
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WHAT do the CARD teams do? Relying on their expertise
and experience, team members make sure the investigation
moves quickly, efficiently, and thoroughly. They provide
our field divisions running the investigations with
on-site investigative, technical, and resource
assistance during the initial critical period after a
child is kidnapped.
WHEN are the teams deployed? Soon after an abduction
has been reported to a local FBI field office , to FBI
Headquarters , or to the National Center for Missing and
Exploited Children , or in other cases when the FBI
determines an investigation is warranted.
WHERE are the teams located and WHERE have they been
deployed? We've created ten regional teams nationwide:
two each in the northeast, southeast, north central,
south central, and west. With the whole nation covered,
we can send a team anywhere in the U.S. within hours.
In addition to their unique expertise, CARD teams can
quickly establish an on-site command post to centralize
investigative efforts and operations. Other assets they
bring to the table include a new mapping tool to
identify and locate registered sex offenders in the
area, national and international lead coverage, and the
Child Abduction Response Plan to guide investigative
efforts.<5>
In a January 2009 audit report entitled, "The Federal Bureau of
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<5> http://www.fbi.gov/hq/cid/cac/kidnap.htm (emphasis in
original).
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Investigation's Efforts to Combat Crimes Against the Children,"
the federal Office of the Inspector General stated in its
Executive Summary with respect to CARD teams:
In the area of child abductions, the FBI created the
Child Abduction Rapid Deployment (CARD) program to
respond to the disappearance of minors. According to
FBI officials, the FBI's unwritten policy is to
elevate its child abduction response to a top
priority. At the same time, FBI written policies
emphasize the importance of a coordinated and timely
response to reports of child abductions. However, the
FBI did not track and evaluate the timeliness of its
response to child abductions, including those cases
where its CARD teams were involved. Given the
importance of an immediate response to the safety of
an abducted child, we recommend that the FBI develop
response timeframe requirements and a mechanism for
tracking and analyzing FBI responsiveness to reports
of child abductions.
We reviewed nine CARD team deployments and found
evidence in FBI files that the FBI coordinated with
local law enforcement and that local law enforcement
officials were satisfied with the FBI's assistance.
However, we believe that the FBI can enhance its
overall efforts to combat child abductions through
better coordination with other major nationwide
programs addressing missing children investigations,
particularly programs at the Office of Justice
Programs (OJP) and NCMEC.
We also found that coordination could be improved in
the FBI's efforts in international parental abduction
by implementing a 2000 U.S. Government Accountability
Office (GAO) recommendation to develop a shared
database among the FBI, Department of State, and
NCMEC. In addition, FBI Legat personnel suggested
more specific training on international parental
kidnapping to enhance the FBI's effectiveness in
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addressing this complex crime.<6>
The authors and/or members of the Committee may wish to discuss
how the teams proposed by this bill differ or conform to the FBI
"CARD" teams. In addition, the authors may wish to describe if
and how the "CARD" teams have assisted in California cases.
WOULD THE TEAMS PROPOSED BY THIS BILL BE SIMILAR TO, AND
COMPLEMENTARY TO, THE EXISTING FBI "CARD" TEAMS?
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<6> http://www.justice.gov/oig/reports/FBI/a0908/exec.htm