Examining Child Abduction by Offender Type Patterns

Abstract

Few crime topics elicit as much fear and concern as child abduction, evident, in part, by the 2006 Uniform Child Abduction Prevention Act that provides courts with guidelines to identify children at risk and supporting intervention options. Media hype and sensationalism have, in the absence of reliable offense‐specific statistics, fueled both popular culture and sociolegal constructions of offender and victim stereotypes, most notably the stranger–pedophile abductor. This study examined original state police case files of all abductions that occurred in South Carolina between 1991 and 1996 (N = 671). Descriptive and multivariate analyses identified: (1) differences between stereotypical and actual abductions, (2) distinct abduction types, (3) offender/victim characteristics, and (4) abduction environment contexts. The results orient discussion around the responsiveness of recent policy initiatives and call attention to the need for further inquiry utilizing more comprehensive abduction data.