Amber Alerts as Security Theater

The Boston Globe (boston.com) has a very interesting piece on how Amber Alerts, while heavily promoted as a tool to save children, do very little to help children who are actually at risk. The quick summary view is that the alerts were mainly successfully in custody dispute situations where the child was a very little risk. Sadly, when the intent was to rape or kill children, Amber Alerts did little to save lives.

Money quote: "Amber Alert is a victim of its own fantastically good intentions," says Griffin. "If someone gets ahold of a kid and has sufficiently nasty intentions, in the long run there's not much we can do."