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California Missing Persons
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 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.
Attention 5th Graders!
We welcome your participation in the U.S. Department of Justice’s National Missing Children’s Day
Poster Contest, pdf
Missing Persons Search
A searchable database of missing persons allows you to look for a
missing person by name, description, county and several other categories
which is a subset of all persons reported as missing by law enforcement
in the State of California.
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 3,000 reports of unidentified persons in our
automated database. Periodically, we will be providing photographs or
drawings of selected cases.
Missing Person Bulletin
The Missing Person Bulletin is of special value to schools, as the
missing children are categorized by school level: preschool, primary and
secondary. There are also sections for dependent adults and voluntary
missing adults. To help locate missing persons, the Department of
Justice also produces and distributes a monthly poster of missing
children and a quarterly bulletin of missing children and dependent
adults. The on-line version of the published quarterly bulletin has
additional categories.
Missing Person Statistics
The Department of Justice annually will update the statistics of missing
persons from information provided by law enforcement agencies. Law
enforcement agencies are required by state law to report missing persons
cases to the Missing Persons System, an automated database which can be
used by authorized law enforcement and criminal justice agencies via
the California Law Enforcement Telecommunications System.
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