To: Honorable Members of the United States Congress

We the undersigned wish to express our concerns regarding the lack of appropriate resources for missing adults, their families and local, state and federal law enforcement investigating cases of missing adults.

Every year thousands of adults become missing due to advanced age, diminished mental capacity, or foul play and are at great risk of both physical harm and sexual exploitation. Often there is no information regarding the whereabouts of these adults and many of them are never reunited with their families. In most cases, families and local law enforcement officials have neither the resources nor the expertise to undertake appropriate search efforts for a missing adult. Therefore the search for a missing adult requires cooperation and coordination among local, state and federal law enforcement agencies and along with the assistance from distant communities where the adult may be located.

The demand for the services of the National Center for Missing Adults has grown substantially. Since 2001, following the enactment of Kristen’s Act (Public Law 106-468), the National Center for Missing Adults has—served as a national resource center and information clearinghouse for missing adults; provided training to investigative law enforcement officers to prepare such officers to appropriately respond to missing adult cases; has provided policy training to police chiefs and sheriffs regarding the issues of missing adults; worked in cooperation with the Bureau of Justice Assistance and the Office for Victims of Crime of the Department of Justice, the International Homicide Investigators Association, and many other agencies in the effort to find missing adults and prevent victimization to include providing emergency assistance to Hurricane Katrina victim’s resolving 99.8% of 13,502 reports received in the aftermath of the hurricane.

This important piece of legislation continues to sit idle in the Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism and Homeland Security. Day after day the families of over fifty thousand missing persons await the safe return of their missing loved ones and are left with only hope that the 110th United States Congress will to make every effort to appropriate the necessary resources to the National Center for Missing Adults and ensure the resources essential to provide vital support services to families of missing persons and the necessary technical services provided to law enforcement agencies throughout the country do not vanish too.

We wholeheartedly support H.R 423 and urge Congress to immediately pass Kristen’s Law Reauthorization, H.R. 423 and expedite funding to the National Center for Missing Adults.