WASHINGTON -- State and federal lawmakers from around the country are pressing a variety of new laws that would make sweeping changes in the way runaways and prostituted children are treated by police and social workers.
In Congress, Democratic leaders in the House and Senate are moving several bills that would improve how runaways are tracked by police, increase spending to provide them with social services and promote methods for earlier intervention. The Government Accountability Office, an auditing arm of Congress, began an investigation in December at the request of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y., into whether police departments are handling runaways properly.
Lawmakers in Pennsylvania and at least nine other states have proposed or passed bills in recent months that focus on runaways by extending outreach efforts and shelter options and changing state reporting requirements so that youth shelters have enough time to win trust and provide services before they need to report the runaways to the police.
Police departments are already required by federal law to enter missing-person reports into a database called the National Crime Information Center, or NCIC, within two hours of receiving them. When local police fail to do this, law enforcement in other jurisdictions do not know to look for the missing person.
Data provided by the national center to The New York Times indicate that the police often do not comply with this requirement. Lawmakers say a series of articles published in The Times in October about the increase in runaway children and teenage prostitution because of the recession, showing how many cases are not being properly tracked by police departments, has prompted much of the legislation.
From November 2006 through November 2009, police in New York City failed in about 40 percent of cases to enter missing-person reports into the NCIC for runaways within 24 hours of receiving the report, according to a review of cases reported to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. The national average during that period was around 16 percent.
Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney, D-N.Y., said the reporting failures were "outrageous."
"It's absolutely inappropriate that many runaway children are missing not only from their homes, but also from the very database meant to help law enforcement officers find them," Ms. Maloney said. She and Rep. Christopher H. Smith, R-N.J., introduced legislation on Nov. 19 to certify that law enforcement agencies comply with federal law by entering all missing children into the federal database.
The bill, which is co-sponsored by Rep. John Conyers Jr., D-Mich., the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, also requires the police to provide anyone who reports a missing person with information about the services provided by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and the National Runaway Switchboard. In many cases, the police said, they often did not take reports about runaways as seriously as abductions, and families were often unaware of other resources.
Mr. Schumer said he planned to introduce a similar bill soon in the Senate, which instructs the Justice Department to perform audits of local law enforcement agencies to ensure compliance with reporting requirements.
At the same time, Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, introduced legislation in December that is modeled after the methods used by the Dallas Police Department in tracking down repeat runaways, which has been successful in reducing teenage prostitution. The bill adjusts the national database so that it automatically flags repeat runaways, much as the Dallas police have been doing.
The bill would also create block grants worth $2.5 million annually, renewable for two more years, that would provide shelter and services like drug treatment, counseling and job training for teenagers seeking to escape prostitution.
Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., introduced a bill in November that would enable school officials to pay for transportation of runaways and homeless youths who want to stay in school. The bill would increase, to $300 million from $70 million, federal money for other services for homeless and runaway youths.
State lawmakers in Connecticut, Hawaii, New York, Pennsylvania and North Dakota are considering bills to improve tracking and services for runaways and minors who are victims of sex trafficking. Washington and Iowa are considering bills to lengthen the time before welfare workers are required to report a child missing. Illinois and Rhode Island have passed and Massachusetts has proposed laws raising penalties on people who engage in the sex trafficking of minors.
Hoping to build on this momentum, the National Conference of State Legislatures began drafting policy guidelines for model legislation on runaways in November to distribute to state lawmakers around the country.
The guidelines, which await final approval by the conference in July, would require teachers, social workers and others who work with children to report to the state child welfare agency any youth believed to be involved in prostitution, according to state Sen. Renee Unterman of Georgia, a Republican who drafted the guidelines and is the chairwoman of the conference's committee on human welfare.
The American Bar Association has also begun changing its policy guidelines so that it can lobby Congress for increased financing for tracking runaways and providing them with social services. Association leaders say they hope to urge Congress to pass a law preventing minors from being charged with a crime -- prostitution -- that they are too young to consent to.
"The number of these kids keeps increasing, services for them keep decreasing and tracking of them is totally insufficient," said Casey Trupin, a professor at the University of Washington law school who helped write the new guidelines. "We figured it was time to get involved because arresting and charging these youth is not helping them escape the streets."
First Published: January 4, 2010, 5:00 a.m.
