The blue light social services? Responding to repeat reports to the police of people missing from institutional locations

Abstract

The issues that arise in responding to repeat reports to the policing of people missing from institutional locations (such as hospitals, mental health units and children's residential care) are the focus of this article. This focus relates to the broader issue of policing vulnerability and the concepts of ‘duty of care’, ‘safeguarding’ and ‘risk’ as they apply to role of the police in their response to missing people. The current study is based on research on 1321 missing persons cases that were closed in 2011; these cases came from 149 institutional locations in a police force in central England and account for nearly half of all repeat reports to the police in this force area. The top ten organisational addresses accounted for over a quarter (27.6%, 364 of 1321) of the repeat reports over a one-year period. Seven of these organisational addresses are private children's care homes (275 reports, 75.5% of the top 10 reporting locations) and three are mental health units (89 reports, 24.5% of the top 10 reporting locations). The cost to the police of responding to reports from these 10 locations is estimated to be between £482,250 and £879,060. The article highlights that a significant part of police work on missing people relates to institutional locations that present the police with different types of potential risk.

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