Kidnapping in the United States

This entry is not a single-victim case but a general reference article describing kidnapping as a category of crime in the United States, including statistics, legal definitions, and prevention systems. It does not identify a specific victim, suspect, or adjudicated case.

Prevalence. Kidnapping statistics for adults in the U.S. are described as difficult to determine because the crime is not separately recorded by the Uniform Crime Report. According to the NCIC's Missing Person File, in 2010 more than 69,000 individuals over the age of 21 were categorized as missing persons for whom there was reasonable concern for safety. The federal government separately estimated around 70,000 missing-persons cases involving adults over 18 in 2001.

For children, the article states that the vast majority of abduction cases in the U.S. are parental kidnappings, in which one parent takes, hides, or holds a child without the knowledge or consent of the other parent or guardian; depending on the state and family's legal status, this may not constitute a criminal offense. Estimates of parental child abductions have varied widely over time: 15,000 to 60,000 per year in 1976, and 459,000 to 751,000 per year by 1984. The U.S. Department of Justice reported roughly 200,000 parental kidnapping cases (domestic and international combined) in 2010. Stranger abductions of people under 21 are described as rare, averaging fewer than 350 per year between 2010 and 2017, with another source estimating only about 100 stranger-abduction cases per year. The State Department reported an average of about 1,100 children abducted from the U.S. to a foreign country annually between 2008 and 2017, with 345 such cases opened as international kidnapping cases in 2017.

Law. Under the Federal Kidnapping Act (18 U.S.C. § 1201), a person who illegally confines, decoys, kidnaps, abducts, seizes, or takes away another person and holds them for ransom or reward can be charged with a federal crime. The statute excludes certain circumstances, such as a child being willingly transported by a parent, or actions taken by government officers/employees in the performance of official duties, or actions involving certain protected foreign officials. Kidnapping can be punished by imprisonment up to life; if the kidnapping results in death, punishment can include execution or life imprisonment. Under U.S. law, kidnapping of a person aged 17 or under is treated as child abduction. The United States is a party to the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction, and the Sean and David Goldman International Child Abduction Prevention and Return Act of 2014 authorizes the Secretary of State to sanction non-cooperating countries and seek extradition of abducting parents, and established the Transportation Security Administration's "do not depart" list.

Prevention and response. The TSA's "do not depart" list can be used by judges in custody cases to flag children at risk of parental abduction, though it is described as underutilized. Amber Alerts are used to notify the public to help locate abducted children and their abductors, typically including descriptions of those involved and sometimes vehicle information.