Each year, around 30,000 people are reported missing in Australia—one person every 18 minutes. The 30,000 people exceed the total number of victims, reported to police for homicide, sexual assault, and unarmed robbery combined.
In Australia, more than 38,000 missing persons reports are received by police each year.
About 1 per cent of Australia's missing persons are never found. Some disappear and are quietly forgotten.
In Australia, an estimated 20,000 children are reported missing every year. Australian Federal Police, National Coordination Centre.
According to the National Missing and Unidentified Persons (NamUS) database, which is funded by the U.S. Department of Justice, more than 600,000 people go missing annually. Approximately 4,400 unidentified bodies are recovered each year.
According to the US Department of Justice's National Missing and Unidentified Persons System, there are 22,740 missing people in the United States.
The United States has what may be the world's highest number of missing persons. According to the National Crime Information Center (NCIC) Missing Person and Unidentified Person Files for the 2021 operational year, 521,705 people were reported missing in 2021.
A four-year-old girl allegedly abducted from her family's tent in remote Western Australia 19 days ago has been found alive. Cleo Smith was found by police in a private home around 30 miles from the campsite and has been reunited with her parents, Western Australia police said in a statement.
Man Pleads Guilty to Abduction of 4-Year-Old Cleo Smith, Australian Girl Found Alive After Missing for 18 Days.
William Tyrrell (born 26 June 2011) is an Australian boy who disappeared at the age of three from Kendall, New South Wales, on 12 September 2014. He had been playing at his foster grandmother's house with his sister, and was wearing a Spider-Man suit at the time of his disappearance.
A Missing Person is defined as anyone whose whereabouts are unknown and there are genuine fears for the safely or concerns for the welfare of that person. It is important to remember that going missing is NOT a crime.
“Sadly, they're not alone in their experience, in 2021, over 34,000 missing persons' reports in Australia related to children under 18.
Jane Nartare Beaumont (born 10 September 1956), Arnna Kathleen Beaumont (born 11 November 1958) and Grant Ellis Beaumont (born 12 July 1961), collectively referred to in the media as the Beaumont children, were three Australian siblings who disappeared from Glenelg Beach near Adelaide, South Australia, on 26 January ...
in crime and criminal justice
Each year, around 30,000 people are reported missing in Australia—one person every 18 minutes.
There are 90,000 working holiday makers backpacking in Australia in 2022, which is still slightly below the 130,000 backpackers recorded in 2019. Getting lost is a major concern when backpacking. Each year, an estimated 2,000-5,000 people go missing on trails.
In Australia, on average, 48 young people under the age of 18 go missing every day. While First Nations young people make up less than 6% of the Australian population under the age of 18, they comprise around 20% of missing children.
On 3 November 2021, Cleo was found by police, alive and well, inside a locked house located minutes from her family home in Carnarvon. A 36-year-old man was subsequently taken into custody after a car he was driving was stopped by police.
Cheryl Gene Grimmer (30 October 1966 – disappeared 12 January 1970; declared legally dead 2011) was a three-year-old toddler who was kidnapped from Fairy Meadow Beach in Wollongong, Illawarra, New South Wales, in January 1970.
Cleo Smith, age 4, disappeared from her family's tent in Western Australia in October, sparking a major search operation, after which she was found 18 days later, alone inside a locked house. Cleo Smith's accused abductor, Terence Darrell Kelly, pleaded guilty via video link from prison.
A four-year-old girl who went missing in southern Tasmania has been found alive and well. About 100 people had been involved in the frantic search for Shayla Phillips on the Tasman Peninsula since she went missing on Wednesday afternoon.
Melissa Highsmith, 53, was abducted by a babysitter from her home in Fort Worth in 1971 when she was just 22 months old. Years of searching by the family yielded nothing - until DNA samples sent to an ancestry website produced a match.
Police strike force called in for missing Sydney grandfather
Chloe Campbell, 14, went missing 10 days ago, on September 30. She was last seen at a Boulder High School football game, in Colorado.
Mental Health
Mental health emerges as a consistent theme in many missing person cases in Australia. Depression and anxiety are the two most common conditions. Research also found that mental health was more associated with adults who had gone missing rather than young people.
Charles Augustus Lindbergh, Jr., 20-month-old son of the famous aviator and Anne Morrow Lindbergh, was kidnapped about 9:00 p.m., on March 1, 1932, from the nursery on the second floor of the Lindbergh home near Hopewell, New Jersey.
Reasons for disappearance may include: To escape domestic abuse. Leaving home to live in an unknown place under a new identity. Becoming the victim of kidnapping.