For 18 years, Massachusetts lawmakers have failed to pass a bill to create mandatory minimum standards for missing children cases. This month, legislators will again debate the fate of An Act Relative to MA Policy & Procedure for Missing and Abducted Children.
On June 29, advocates gathered for their annual Missing Children’s Day at the State House (separate from National Missing Children’s Day, recognized on May 25), where they encouraged lawmakers to pass what they call “common-sense legislation.” House Bill H.2671 and its Senate counterpart S.1755 would mandate basic measures such as police training and a universal intake form. However, since its first incarnation in 2009, near-identical variations of the bill have stalled and died in the Ways and Means Committee. This fiscal gatekeeping ensures Massachusetts falls behind on national safety standards.
By dragging out the legislative process over decades, the state has exhausted family members of the missing. Such is the case with Heather Bish, the director of the Molly Bish Foundation. After Heather’s sister, Molly, was abducted and murdered in 2000, Heather became an advocate for children’s safety. She recounted that with each iteration of the bill, her meetings with legislators on Beacon Hill would feel positive, only to be met with further stalling.
“I feel like I’m wasting my time,” Bish said. “I feel like I’m that character with steam coming out of my ears and my head exploding.”
Inside the stalled safety bill
If passed, H.2671 would mandate a comprehensive guide for law enforcement agencies, based on recommendations from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC). All veterans and new police officers would need to take a triennial two-hour in-service training program. The bill also introduces a universal intake form for missing children, available in 12 languages so immigrant families can access immediate emergency responses.
Bills with these exact same or similar policies have appeared many times before. The measures follow a pattern of being reported favorably by the Joint Committee on Public Safety and Homeland Security, only to languish in the Ways and Means Committee without ever reaching a final vote.
Forensic anthropologist Dr. Ann Marie Mires noted that advocates have pushed for these protocols and training mandates since 2008. One year, she recalled supporters being convinced they had the “momentum” and “traction” to “get the funding” for the bill. When it ultimately didn’t pass, Dr. Mires described it as a “sucker punch to the gut.” She recalled that at that time, after so many years of fighting for missing children in Massachusetts, Heather Bish “lost all interest and enthusiasm.”
Laurie Myers, former executive director of the sex offender registry board, echoed this disappointment about child safety standards remaining unpassed and unfunded. “We don’t hesitate to put loads of money into all kinds of different programs,” she said. “Why wouldn’t they fund a cross-the-board initiative to protect kids? It is just mind-boggling.”
The federal transparency gap
Several states have already introduced laws similar to H.2671, some with even stricter standards. Many such laws are based on the federal 2005 Model State Missing Persons Statute, which recommends that law enforcement accept reports without delay, respond to high-risk cases immediately, and share info with state and regional authorities.
Currently, if members of the public go on the Mass State Police website seeking a statewide missing children’s database, they get redirected to the National Missing and Unidentified Persons system. Known as NamUs for short, this is a national information clearinghouse and a resource center for missing and unidentified persons. While law enforcement’s internal database tracks more than 1,200 active missing cases in Massachusetts, the public-facing NamUs database lists as few as 65 total. The state effectively outsources its transparency to external databases, which it then fails to populate.
Michigan, Arkansas, Tennessee, and Oklahoma legally require all law enforcement to enter missing and unidentified persons data into NamUs, with deadlines ranging from “immediate” to “within 30 days.” While New York requires general cases be shared with NamUs within 180 days, missing children’s reports must specifically be shared within 30 days.
Meanwhile, Massachusetts only reports 6% of active missing cases in the state to NamUs. This means 94% of cases are invisible to the general public, and to the forensic experts who rely on that platform. Because NamUs offers free DNA and dental analyses, this exclusion prevents the federal government from offering forensic aid to MA law enforcement.
Even before the 2005 Model State Statute, states such as California, Kansas, Nevada, and New Mexico had established laws on missing persons and the identification of human remains. In Massachusetts, a 2020 task force report showed that only 4% of active unidentified remains cases were voluntarily entered into federal systems by the state medical examiner. Because there is no centralized state-run warehouse for the data, identification tools such as forensic and dental records are underutilized.
A patchwork response across departments
Right now, a child’s search response depends on the expertise and resources of a local police chief, rather than a binding state protocol. In contrast, Connecticut mandates that all law enforcement officers participate in NamUs training modules. Oklahoma and Arkansas also have statewide mandatory programs to train officers to investigate missing and unidentified person cases. From New England to the Southwest, Massachusetts remains an outlier when it comes to passing laws to track and protect missing children.
Myers noted that public officials and leaders come and go, while funding changes. The former ED of the sex offender registry board said, “I think we owe it to a very vulnerable population to have something set in stone […] so that there is consistency in the way cases are handled.”
While H.2671 mandates the adoption of NCMEC-recommended protocols, it doesn’t include explicit auditing requirements or penalties for non-compliance. Further legislation would need to be introduced to ensure that the protocols are genuinely enforced.
At present, both H.2671 and S.1755 have been referred to the House and Senate Committees on Ways and Means, respectively. Under the bills, the proposed date for initial implementation of the new standards is January 2026. Considering the history of such measures, though, the loved ones of the missing will have to keep waiting.
“It’s not fair to the families,” Dr. Mires said on Missing Children’s Day. “They’ve waited for a long time.”
This work was supported by a seed grant from the Fund for Investigative Journalism. This article is syndicated by the MassWire news service of the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism. If you want to see more reporting like this, sign up for BINJ’s free weekly newsletter at binj.news/signup.
