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Missing Persons Investigations and Identification: Issues of Scale, Infrastructure, and Political Will

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Abstract

While in principle finding a missing person (presumed deceased) involves identification of unknown human remains through an apparently simple comparison of ante- and postmortem data, there are a number of variables that in practice make the process very complex. The geographic and sociopolitical context of where and how a person goes missing often determines the time taken to start the search as well as the logistical and financial infrastructure in place to facilitate both the search and the identification process. The circumstances of the disappearance and the response time also have an impact on the preservation and condition of the remains which in turn affects the identification process. This chapter considers each of these variables in light of the different scenarios in which people go missing.

History counts its skeletons in round numbers. A thousand and one remains a thousand, as though the one had never existed(Szymborska, 2001: 38–39)

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The missing person may either be presumed deceased or thought to be alive but may ultimately be located as a result of the identification of deceased remains.

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Acknowledgements

I thank Luis Fondebrider for the numerous discussions we have had about missing persons while undertaking fieldwork and delivering training together which provided the inspiration for some of the ideas for this chapter. I am also extremely grateful to Amy Mundorff and Stephen Cordner for the insightful comments they provided on drafts of this chapter.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Forensic Medicine, Victorian Institute of Forensic Medicine, Monash University, 57 Kavanagh St., Southbank, VIC, 3006, Australia

    Soren Blau Ph.D.

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  1. Soren Blau Ph.D.
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Correspondence to Soren Blau Ph.D. .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Nursing and Health Sciences, California State University, East Bay, San Francisco, California, USA

    Stephen J. Morewitz

  2. Forensic Archaeology and Genocide, Investigation, Staffordshire University, Staffordshire, United Kingdom

    Caroline Sturdy Colls

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Blau, S. (2016). Missing Persons Investigations and Identification: Issues of Scale, Infrastructure, and Political Will. In: Morewitz, S., Sturdy Colls, C. (eds) Handbook of Missing Persons. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-40199-7_14

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