Fingerprinting Kids :: essays research papers

Shouldparents voluntarily create detailed identificationrecords(including fingerprints) on their children inanticipation of possiblerunaway problems or abductions?(1) Yes. You can never tell when terriblethings will happento a child, so its best to be prepared. (2) No. Thevastmajority of missing children are not abducted. Whetherabducted ornot, fingerprint will do no good. It wastestime and money and pushesus that much closer to thecreation of the Orwellian National Data CenterthatCongress rejected fifteen long time ago. BACKGROUND Asof early 1983, 11 states had launched programstofingerprint children.( These were New York, Virginia,Florida, Georgia, NewJersey, California, Pennsylvania,Massachusetts, Nebraska, Connecticut,Rhode Island,Kansas, Illinois, and Indiana.) Most of this activitywasstimulated by the passage of the Missing Children Actin October 1982.What the new law did was to legitimatizethe use of the FBIs nationalcomputer network,the NationalCrime Information Center (NCI C) fornon-criminalpurposes. All of the programs are voluntary. In some casesthe policedepartments retain the records, while in others thefingerprint cards areturned everywhere to the parents forsafekeeping. The apparent purpose of theprogram is tohelp provide positive identification to link either childrenpicked up, or bodies recovered, with missing personnotices. Every year about 1 million children are reportedmissing. Of these approximately, about 800,000, are away fromhome for less than two weeks. About150,000 of the totalmissing are abducted of these two thirds are abductedby adivorced parent. Some of the reasons behind the missingchildren are not pretty.According to an article in Parade,"about 35 percent of runaways leave homebecause ofincest, 53 percent because of visible neglect. The restare"throwaways," children kicked out or simply abandonedby parents who moveaway. Every state has laws againstincest, child abuse, abandonment, childpornography andthe procuring of children, but they are rarely enforced."POINT conscientious parents should have their childrensfingerprintsrecorded to help in the event of an abductionthey shouldnt wait until aftersomething terrible happens, butshould take reasonable steps now. Thousands of childrenare runaways, and in many cases it is all butimpossible to plant clearly who they really are. People change,butfingerprints dont. Well-intentioned but misguided civillibertarians worryabout Big Brother. But they tend tooverlook the obvious benefits of theprogram andconcentrate on wildly imaginative fantasies about BigBrother.If they would come down to earth once in a while,and visit with and sharethe anguish of a family of anabducted child, they would quickly changetheir attitudes.Besides, in most cases the police do not keep therecords,the parents do. COUNTERPOINT Absent someshowing that the fingerprinting will actuallyhelp keepchildren safe and help capture criminals who reproach orabduct them,parents should refuse to have their childrenfingerprinted. In promotingthe child fingerprinting program,police officials tend to be vague abouthow the program will