When police receive a missing persons report they face a tough decision, one which will determine the amount of energy and resources that go into finding someone’s loved one. The officer that receives the report must try to accurately assess the missing person’s level of risk.
If a person’s risk is deemed as “low” or “absent”, only the minimum actions will be taken: a record will be made and relatives will be contacted. However, if a person is deemed to be at “high-risk” of serious harm (defined as “a risk which is life threatening and/or traumatic, and from which recovery, whether physical or psychological, can be expected to be difficult or impossible” by the Home Office 2002 and Offender Assessment System 2006), the police will throw all available resources into the search. These high-risk cases are managed by a member of the senior management team, with support from an investigating officer and a police search adviser. A media strategy will also be put in place.
So how do police decide which missing people deserve more resources?
A decision-making guide was created in 2009 to aid the categorisation of risk in missing people. It prompts officers to consider various factors, including: age, injury, mental and physical illness, medication, substance dependency, behaviour, crime, suicide, sexuality, gender, weather conditions, relationships, abuse and harassment, school and work, finances, and religion.
There are a few groups of people who will never be categorised as "no apparent risk", including children at risk of sexual exploitation or abuse and children or adults who are deemed to be at a greater risk due to factors such as mental health problems, forced marriage, honour-based violence, trafficking, and female genital mutilation.
Despite the variety of factors used to determine risk, police resources are already stretched thin and so officers must be conscious of cost when categorising cases. Since 2013, missing person investigations are a bigger drain on police resources than either theft or assault: a missing person’s investigation costs a minimum of £1,325.44, and £2,415.80 is a realistic estimate of the cost of medium-risk, medium-term cases. This means that the majority of cases end up being classified as medium-risk – 63.6% nationally – rather than high-risk. In medium-risk cases, investigation begins at the earliest convenience but is not immediate. Sadly, this means that vital leads can sometimes be missed. For example, in 2017, student Janet Muller went missing from a mental health ward at Mill View hospital in Hove. Her case was initially classed as medium-risk and later changed to high-risk, however Janet’s body was found soon after in a burnt-out car.
It is a very different picture in London, however, with the majority of cases (34.9%) classed as high-risk, with only 25.6% being deemed medium risk. This is the second highest percentage of high-risk cases in any English county, after Cumbria. This could be due to a number of factors, including London’s large population or the high percentage of BAME residents, who are up to two times more likely to go missing than their white counterparts.