The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) provides a wide array of services; the following are highlights.
Call Center
- NCMEC’s toll-free hotline operates 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. Since its inception in 1984 through the last quarter of 2007, more than 2.2 million calls have been received.
Investigative Assistance
- America’s Law Enforcement Retiree Team (Project ALERT) and Team Adam are composed of retired law enforcement officers skilled in investigating crimes against children. Both programs provide free, on-site assistance to local law enforcement investigating missing or exploited children.
- Cold Case Review Unit investigates long-term missing child cases by collaborating with law enforcement, medical examiners, and families to try to resolve these cases.
International Division
- Provide assistance to parents, attorneys, law enforcement, and others in cases of international abduction of children.
- Provide financial assistance to parents who are unable to reunite with their children once they have been found.
CyberTipline®
- Congressionally mandated to provide an online reporting tool for the public to report suspected incidents of child exploitation, including child victims of prostitution and pornography, extra-familial molestation of children, and child sex tourism.
- Since the launch of this service in 1998 through the last quarter in 2007, there have been more than 500,000 incident reports collected.
Child Victim Identification Program
- The Child Victim Identification Program (CVIP) was established in 2002 as a clearinghouse for child pornography cases.
- Work with federal, local and international law enforcement, prosecutors to locate the victims and prosecute the perpetrators that trade, sell, distribute these images.
NetSmartz Workshop®
- An online interactive resource for children to raise awareness on safety and prevent victimization.
Age Enhancement, Facial Reconstruction, and Imaging/Identification
- Provide computerized age progression of the photographs of long-term missing and exploited children.
- Reconstruction of facial images from morgue photographs of unidentified, deceased children.
Photo and Poster Distribution
- Lost Child Alert Technology Resource (LOCATER) program provides a free-of-charge, web-based, poster creation and dissemination tool to law enforcement agencies nationwide.
- Provide posters of missing children to major corporations, major media outlets to ensure wide exposure.
Training
- Jimmy Ryce Law Enforcement Training Center (JRLETC) was established in 1997 to train law enforcement on crimes against children investigations. The JRLETC has trained more than 214,000 individuals since its inception.