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Michigan for the Federal Help Find the Missing Act - Billy's Law
Texas for the Federal Help Find the Missing Act - Billy's Law
Every year tens of thousands of Americans go missing, never to be seen by their loved ones again. At the same time, there are also an estimated 40,000 sets of unidentified human remains that are being held or disposed of across the country. Sadly, because of gaps in the nations missing persons systems, missing persons and unidentified remains are rarely matched. The Help Find the Missing Act (Billys Law) is an effort to fix these problems and bring closure to the loved ones of the missing.
This legislation is named after Billy Smolinski of Waterbury, Connecticut who went missing on August 24, 2004 at the age of 31. Billys family knows all too well the systemic challenges in trying to find the missing. They quickly learned that while federal law mandates law enforcement report missing children, there are no such requirements for adults or unidentified bodies. Compounding this problem is the fact that local law enforcement agencies, medical examiners, and coroners, often dont have the resources or training to voluntarily report these cases. Finally, even when missing adults and remains are reported, the wide-range of unconnected federal, state, local, and non-profit databases to help match the missing with unidentified bodies, makes finding a match an often insurmountable challenge.
The Help Find the Missing Act builds upon recent efforts to address these issues by:
Authorizing, and therefore helping to ensure funding for, the National Missing Persons and Unidentified Persons System (NamUs), which was created in July 2007 by the Department of Justice (DOJ) to provide a missing persons/unidentified database that the public could access and contribute;
Connecting NamUs with the FBIs National Crime Information Center (NCIC) in order to create more comprehensive missing persons and unidentified remains databases and streamlining the reporting process for local law enforcement;
Expanding current law by requiring missing children be reported to NamUs (they already must be reported to NCIC);
Creating an incentive grants program to help states, local law enforcement, and medical examiners and coroners report missing persons and unidentified remains to NCIC, NamUs, and the National DNA Index System (NDIS); and
Calling on the DOJ to issue guidelines and best practices on handling missing persons and unidentified remains cases in order to empower law enforcement, medical examiners and coroners to help find the missing.
