HOUSE RESOLUTION 454

HOW THEY DO IT WITH STATISTICS

This is going to be a brief Post, but I think it will help clarify a phenomenon the SO community (and everybody else in the country) faces when it comes to ‘statistics’ and claims made for public consumption.

I am going to do a brief review of the 1-page House Resolution 454, passed June 10, 2009. The text of it is here. It is a Resolution honoring the 25th anniversary of Congress’s setting up the Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

Of course, I will say right off that I hold no brief whatsoever for those who abduct, abuse, or otherwise exploit children. It is not my intent here to cast aspersions on the purpose of the Center.

But the Resolution offers in one single page some very clear examples of how things can be done in the ‘advocacy’ world, and in the Beltway generally.

First off, as so often, is a question of definitions: what exactly does the group mean by “exploited”? Do public school kids who are not getting much of an education count? Who haven’t got health care and are growing up in poverty? Probably not what the Center takes to be its mandate or its preferred ‘sense’ of “exploited”, although the unsuspecting Citizen-reader may not be privy to the ‘mental reservations’ included in the Center’s definition of “exploited”.

Second, it’s a little curious how they define “missing”. The first ‘Whereas’ clause says that “800,000 children are reported missing each year in the United States”. OK. How do they define “missing”? My guess is that either they have somehow extrapolated the number: you ask say 100 families if they reported any of their tykes “missing” to the police this year; if 25 say Yes, then you simply get the number of ‘families’ (however defined) in the country, and say that 25% of them have had a (or several, if you think it will help) tyke reported “missing” this year. Or, you might add up all the ‘missing child’ reports from the police departments throughout the country (there may be a public clearing house or FBI or DOJ Report with the number, or you may have access to police info – who knows now?).

But that “missing” includes the tykes who aren’t where a parent expects them to be and so the parent immediately calls the police.

That possibility is supported by the next Whereas clause: “Whereas 200,000 of that number are abducted by family members, and 58,000 are abducted by non-family members, for which the primary motive is sexual assault”. So a quarter of the 800,000 go missing because they are with family members.

And does “abducted” mean that they were purposely and with malice-aforethought kidnapped? Or that they happened to be with some other family member and the parent calling the police didn’t know it at the time?

And that 58,000: grammatically, the way the Resolution’s text is written, with the comma after “members” in the 58,000 clause, then the following clause – “for which the primary motive is sexual assault” – applies to both of the preceding clauses, yielding the ‘fact’ that all 200,000 are “abducted” for the primary motivation of “sexual assault”.

I think they mean to say that the “sexual assault” clause only refers to the 58,000 (and that’s just my surmise). But that leaves the question: do they actually pay attention to what they’re writing in the Beltway when they do these things? Or does some pol just get a fax with the group’s desired text and then parrot it to the Membership under his/her sponsorship?

At any rate, a quarter of all “missing child” reports, apparently, are the result of abduction by family members or strangers for the purposes of “sexual assault”. That’s a huge number, if by “sexual assault” we mean attempted rape or rape or something along those lines. Of course, if “sexual assault” is defined in the Center’s special vocabulary as involving any physical contact whatsoever (picking the child up to put him/her into a vehicle or to give him/her a bottle or some such) then the picture changes greatly.

I don’t know the answer to that myself, but this text doesn’t enlighten me either. But then, perhaps it’s not designed to do that, at least as its “primary motivation”.

But then the next Whereas clause says “Whereas each year 115 children are the victims of the most serious abductions, kidnapped by non-family members and either ransomed, murdered, or taken with the intent to keep”. So out of 800,000, 200,000 and 58,000 we now get to 115 who are actually abducted in the sense that the average person might understand (and such abductions are genuinely outrageous and abhorrent). 115 out of 800,000. Which tallies to 0.00014375 if I’ve gotten my calculator to do it right.

Which is not to minimize the 115, but to put it into context of the actual percentage of cases where things are really bad.*

I think that the percentage of kids killed in autos driven by or hit by negligent or impaired or distracted adults is probably a lot higher than 0.00014375, but I don’t suppose Congress will leap at the conclusion that to save ‘even just one’ it is necessary to ban adults from driving kids in cars, or tasking the nation’s police with setting up checkpoints every day, or keeping a Registry of who has or might usually drive kids around in a vehicle.

Clause Six asserts that “Whereas NCMEC has assisted law enforcement in the recovery of more than 138,500 children”. Again, I’m happy to hear that so many cases turned out more or less well. But just how did the Center manage to do that? It is it involved in resolving each of these cases? Or does it count every reportedly missing child whose name it puts up on its internet list and is later found – by anybody – as a ‘save’ for itself?

Clause Seven asserts that “Whereas NCMEC’s Amber Alert program has led to 443 recoveries”. “Led to” directly, or is this another matter where any recovery of any child whose name is Amber-Alerted counts as a “recovery” attributable to the Center? And don’t the police put those Alerts out? Does the Center have the authority to issue those too? On the police network? How does it work with the Center rather than the police agencies doing it?

And 443 out of 800,000 works out (again, I don’t vouch for my math – never my best subject) to 0.0005537. Which, again, is nice but … and do these ‘recoveries’ count from the most serious cases or from the overall 800,000 or from the 200,000 or from the 58,000?

Clause Eight truly stupefies: “Whereas in 2008, NCMEC helped recover more children than any other year in the organization’s 25-year history, raising the recovery rate from 62 percent in 1990 to 97 percent today”. So 97% of the children are recovered – is that 97% of the 800,000, the 200,000, the 58,000, or the 115?

And if it’s from one of the vastly larger numbers, then is it not possible that a very large percentage of those “missing children” were actually only misplaced tykes, or got picked up by Grandma, or were teens who ran away in the first place? And if it’s runaway teens, then that’s hell and gone from an infant or toddler snatched by a stranger for purposes of sex and murder. Which it would be nice to know so that Citizens can judge things for themselves.

Clause Nine reports “Whereas NCMEC operates the toll-free 24-hour national missing children’s hotline, which has handled more than 2,377,000 calls”. OK, and over 25 years that works out to around 95,000 calls per year (presuming that the line has been in service for 25 years) – although in that same timeframe, 20 million “children” (however defined) have gone – or at least been reported – “missing”. I’m not sure how long the hot-line has been working, but the Resolution says 800,000 per year and so there have been 20 million ‘children’ missing in this country in the psat 25 years - if this were genuinely true, it dwarfs 9-11 and either or both of the World Wars. Can this be right? Can this be true? It depends, of course, on how you define things and how you crunch the numbers.

I wonder, though, if the Citizens are expected to crunch any numbers at all – but rather to simply listen to the Congressional recitation and then applaud politely and agree (bringing back memories of the attendees at Stalin’s birthday parties).

Clause Ten acknowledges that “Whereas NCMEC provides assistance to families and law enforcement agencies in locating and recovering missing and exploited children, both nationally and internationally”. Yes, although how many families and just how many phone calls and letters qualify as “internationally”? Does this mean they are working with Interpol, or that sometimes European families call about ‘children’ vacationing or going to college here who haven’t called home and don’t write? Again, there’s a lot that is and isn’t in this assertion.

Clause Eleven, however, more directly invites SO community attention: “Whereas NCMEC offers technical assistance and training to law enforcement in identifying and locating non-compliant sex offenders”. Sooooo, they just accidentally happened upon these persons while looking for missing children (however defined)? Or are they also another volunteer bunch in the ‘sex offender hunting’ business? And if the latter, then do they have access to the NCIC and police databases, being a formally erected or chartered or recognized (by Congress) organization? Of course, if the Center is part of the SO mania, then I can start to see why Congress is going to such lengths to enable it, just as the Center is grasping so deeply to puff itself up. (And if memory serves, the head of this Center is a formal and public supporter of the AWA – but that can’t be a surprise to anybody.)

And what sort of “training” does the Center provide that the official police agency training establishments do not offer? And what sort of “technical assistance” that the police agencies don’t have access to already? (And again, how much access to official police databases does this Center have?)

Clause Twelve reports that “Whereas NCMEC has a team of forensic artists who create age progression photos, which has assisted in the successful recovery of 895 children”. 895 out of which number? 800,000, 200,000, 58,000 … ?

Clause Thirteen reports that “Whereas NCMEC CyberTipline has handled more than 686,000 reports”. Reports of what? Are people cybering the Center rather than the police? Are they cybering to report the missing child? Are they cybering to ‘report’ suspected ‘sex offenders’? (the vast majority of whom, as is known, have nothing to do with children)? Surely, the original sin of conflating ‘sex offenders against children’ with all ‘sex offenders’ (often on the baseless assertion that if you sex-offend against an adult (or animal) then you are bound to do so against children sooner or later, if you haven’t already) now comes home to roost.

And over how many years has this cyber-thing been in operation? And do these ‘reports’ also include ‘opinions’ and blog-like one-liners?

Clause Fourteen reports that “Whereas NCMEC’s Child Victim Identification Program has reviewed and analyzed 23,000,000 child pornography images and videos, 8,600,000 in 2008 alone” – that’s an awful lot of viewing of pornography … how do you get away with it if you’re not the police? I thought you could get in a lot of trouble merely for ‘possession’ of if it were on your hard-drive or in an email that you – advertently or inadvertently – opened? Are they somehow as immune as the police and prosecutors?

Clause Fifteen continues to give something of a hidden game away. “Whereas NCMEC’s sex offender tracking team has already located 402 missing sex offenders”. So they are in the sex-offender hunting business, and I notice that the Resolution – as so often in this thing – does not distinguish between ‘sex offenders against children’ and ‘sex offenders’ generally. ** And how much authority does this ‘tracking team’ enjoy, the Center actually being a Congressionally-somethinged entity? And in what way were the 402 (spread over how many years?) sex offenders “missing”? We are seeing more and more SOs who can wind up being out-of-compliance simply because the web of SO laws and regulations are so minute. And who can say how many SOs are technically ‘missing’ because they haven’t complied with the retroactive net swung so widely by AWA?

Clause Eighteen informs the taxpayers that “Whereas NCMEC facilitates the deployment of the National Emergency Child Locator Center during periods of national disasters”. There is such a thing? And rather than an actual government agency (FEMA, DOJ, FBI, DHS) this quasi-governmental entity runs such an expensive and complex operation? Or is it just a tent with some laptops and a coffee-machine? Sorry, but this is starting to really irritate me.

The Nineteenth and final Clause informs the Citizens that “Whereas NCMEC deploys Team Adam, a rapid response and support system comprised of retired law enforcement officers, to provide on-site technical assistance to local law enforcement agencies investigating cases of child abduction and sexual exploitation”. Named, no doubt, after Adam Walsh (upon whom be much peace) whose disappearance and death – and the motivation for them – remain unknown to this day, and the perpetrator(s) undiscovered, and whose death may have had nothing whatsoever to do with sex or sex offenders at all.

This whole operation sounds to me like not only a quasi-governmental but also quasi-police organization.

I would have to say that while its general original and titled purpose – missing and exploited children – extends far far beyond sex-offenses, yet it has found its operational niche in matters sex-offensual. And to that extent, whether unintentionally or otherwise, has become an active element in the sex-offense mania.

This is not to denigrate its cause or the cases of the truly missing and exploited children in this country. Nor to impugn the good intentions of the participants. But there’s an awful lot of stuff here – which the Center almost certainly intended for the House to publish in its Resolution – that raises more questions than it allays.

And my original purpose in this Post is not the Center itself, but rather to demonstrate how one might go about reading these sort of things – as Soviet readers used to read Pravda and Izvestia: between the lines and for ‘what wasn’t there’.

Nor do I accept that the Soviet reference is ‘extreme’ or ‘shrill’ or uncalled-for. Given the way things have gone, I think it’s quite justified indeed.

NOTES

*Of course, you can say that ‘if even one’ is abducted, or ‘if even one’ such abduction is prevented, then it’s worth it – but I’m looking at the general techniques here, not examining child-abductions. This ‘if only even one’ approach has been used to justify the huge matrix of sex-offense police-state laws (and the domestic-violence police-state laws before that). You get to the point where you have to ask yourself – and where the Citizenry has to ask itself – just how much ‘police state’ can the country survive in order to meet this problem? The problem of answering that question, you might realize, was and still is precisely the one that later arose after 9-11, in terms of security-vs-civil-rights, free-speech-vs-civil-and-Constitutional-rights, and even ‘torture’. These things have a tendency to migrate among the ongoing Beltway excitements.

**In making this distinction I am not at all implying that sex offenders against children deserve fewer Constitutional rights and protections; like any American who is convicted of a crime, a sex offender against children retains all of his/her Constitutional rights and is still, in the Constitutional scheme and vision, a Citizen. (And you can see why the Sex Offense mania and all its supporters are, willy or nilly, a threat to the Constitution and the Constitutional vision, and to the future of the American Constitutional polity.)

ADDENDUM

I can recommend to you the site www.govtrack.us/ where you can keep track of all Bills pending before Congress. Simply go to the homepage, click on 'Bills and Resolutions', then on the page that appears, enter 'sex offenders' or some such in your search terms box, and it will show you every Bill pending in this or the previous Sessions and Congresses that relates to the search term.

I am happy to report that although there are a number of 'sex offender' Bills introduced this year, they all are 'in committee', and not many appear as if they are going to make it to the floor for consideration and a vote.

Don't pop any corks yet.