Fingerprinting Kids :: essays research papers

Should parents voluntarily create detailed identification records(including fingerprints) on their children in anticipation of possiblerunaway problems or abductions? (1) Yes. You can never tell when terriblethings will happen to a child, so its best to be prepared. (2) No. Thevast majority of missing children are not abducted. Whether abducted ornot, fingerprinting will do no good. It wastes time and money and pushesus that much closer to the creation of the Orwellian National Data Centerthat Congress rejected fifteen years ago. BACKGROUND: As of early 1983, 11 states had launched programs tofingerprint children.( These were New York, Virginia, Florida, Georgia, NewJersey, California, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Nebraska, Connecticut,Rhode Island, Kansas, Illinois, and Indiana.) Most of this activity wasstimulated by the passage of the Missing Children Act in October 1982.What the new law did was to legitimize the use of the FBI's nationalcomputer network,the National Crime Information Center (NCIC) fornon-criminal purposes. All of the programs are voluntary. In some cases the policedepartments retain the records, while in others the fingerprint cards areturned over to the parents for safekeeping. The apparent purpose of theprogram is to help provide positive identification to link either children picked up, or bodies recovered, with missing person notices. Every year about 1 million children are reported missing. Of thesemost, about 800,000, are away from home for less than two weeks. About150,000 of the total missing are abducted; of these two thirds are abductedby a divorced parent. Some of the reasons behind the missing children are not pretty.According to an article in Parade, "about 35 percent of runaways leave homebecause of incest, 53 percent because of physical neglect. The rest are"throwaways," children kicked out or simply abandoned by parents who moveaway. Every state has laws against incest, child abuse, abandonment, childpornography and the procuring of children, but they are rarely enforced." POINT: Conscientious parents should have their childrens' fingerprintsrecorded to help in the event of an abduction; they shouldn't wait until aftersomething terrible happens, but should take reasonable steps now. Thousands of children are runaways, and in many cases it is all butimpossible to determine clearly who they really are. People change, butfingerprints don't. Well-intentioned but misguided civil libertarians worryabout Big Brother. But they tend to overlook the obvious benefits of theprogram and concentrate on wildly imaginative fantasies about Big Brother.If they would come down to earth once in a while, and visit with and sharethe anguish of a family of an abducted child, they would quickly changetheir attitudes. Besides, in most cases the police do not keep the records,the parents do. COUNTERPOINT: Absent some showing that the fingerprinting will actuallyhelp keep children safe and help capture criminals who harm or abduct them,parents should refuse to have their children fingerprinted. In promotingthe child fingerprinting program, police officials tend to be vague abouthow the program will