Fingerprinting Kids :: essays research papers

Shouldparents voluntarily stool detailed identificationrecords(including fingerprints) on their children inanticipation of possiblerunaway problems or abductions?(1) Yes. You piece of tail never tell when terriblethings will happento a child, so its crush 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 proximate to thecreation of the Orwellian National Data nubblethatCongress rejected fifteen years 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.) closely of this activitywasstimulated by the passage of the Missing Children Actin October 1982.What the novel law did was to legitimizethe use of the FBIs nationalcomputer network,the NationalCrime Infor mation Center (NCIC) fornon-criminalpurposes. All of the programs are voluntary. In some casesthe policedepartments retain the records, while in others thefingerprint cards areturned over to the parents forsafe restraining. The apparent purpose of theprogram is tohelp furnish positive identification to link either childrenpicked up, or bodies recovered, with missing someonenotices. each year slightly 1 million children are reportmissing. Of thesemost, about 800,000, are away fromhome for less than two weeks. About150,000 of the matchmissing are abducted of these two thirds are abductedby adivorced parent. somewhat 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 physical neglect. The easementare"throwaways," children kicked out or simply abandonedby parents who moveaway. Every state has laws againstincest, child abuse, abandonment, childpornogr aphy andthe procuring of children, only if they are rarely enforced."POINT scrupulous 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(prenominal) butimpossible todetermine clearly who they really are. People change,butfingerprints dont. Well-intentioned but mislead civillibertarians worryabout Big Brother. But they tend tooverlook the obvious benefits of theprogram and revolve about on wildly imaginative fantasies about BigBrother.If they would come shore 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 back therecords,the parents do. COUNTERPOINT Absent someshowing that the fingerprinting will actuallyhelp keepchildren safe and help capture cri minals who harm orabduct them,parents should defy to have their childrenfingerprinted. In promotingthe child fingerprinting program,police officials tend to be vague abouthow the program will