Tracking Parent Abduction
Law enforcement authorities across the globe are collaborating on a new high-tech system that will enable officials to keep track of cases in which parents have abducted a child, including cases in which a child is taken to a different country.
The computerized system, known as the International Child Abduction Statistical Database, will also keep tabs on how court systems in other countries are adhering to the Hague Convention’s tenets on child abduction disputes.
“We need to understand the trends in this international child abduction system and we need to know the courts are performing,” says William Duncan, deputy secretary general of the Hague Convention.
The system will keep tabs on cases in the 74 countries that have agreed to the Hague Convention guidelines.
A number of prominent countries do not recognize the Hague treaty on child abduction, including China, Russia, Japan, and several Middle Eastern countries. Some 22 percent of American child abduction cases are solved by parents who hire “child recovery experts.
Abstracted by the National Law Enforcement and Corrections Technology Center(NL