I awoke this morning with the need to write another quick post here – on the suspension of searching. I obviously discussed it slightly yesterday with the idea that we should search areas where outstanding high risk mispers could be; however, my recent revision of missing person behaviour statistics has obviously made me think more about this.

I want to start, however, with a quote that many find surprising.

As a general principle, searching should take place throughout the day and night. This will be determined by the circumstances but in all cases where a full managed search is undertaken, there must be valid reasons why it is not continued throughout the full 24 hours.
ACPO Guidance on the Managment, Recording and Investigation of Missing Persons, 2005

How many ALSAR Units’ local police expect them to continue searching for a full 24 hour period? How many Units are asked to return for a second day?

It seems to me, that often the police attitude is that they “must” do a search and “clear” a few high probability areas to show that they have done something. There seem to exist a large number of those dangerous rationalisations that we teach our on our basic search courses within the police. [That sounds very harsh - there are a number of very, very good police officers who are dedicated and passionate about finding missing persons in the same way that search volunteers are - And I do recognise this!]

But the reality is the police very often run out of the will (and a great deal of this is about the political will to carry on search operations that are very man-power intensive), the man-power and the budget to actually do more than this initial search. A quick look at the ALSAR stats shows how few searches actually result is a find. Many are well outside the area and still mobile, but there remain still a few potentially still alive, lying just outside our search areas. How do I know?

Take a look at Koester’s Lost Person Behavior - Survivability ;

Dementia – just 5% will die within 24 hours, 35% will die over the next 48 hours or so but 60% will still be alive at this point. Even after 96 hours, 46% will still be alive.

Despondents – 25% will kill themselves within 24 hours, but there will still be 19% alive after 72 hours.

Koester writes a very clear warning about using these statistics;

Survivability statistics must not be the major criteria for deciding to suspend a search… It may be appropriate to use survival statistics as the sole reason to prolong a search.
Lost Person Behavior, 2008

And I think my thinking neatly ties in with this last sentence – should we start using these survival statistics to persuade our local police to continue search operations for longer than our present 4-6 hour searches?

Should we start expecting searches to last 2 or 3 operational periods if nothing is found and planning accordingly?