Child Protection

By a Biometrica staffer There were 93 school shootings with casualties at public and private elementary and secondary schools in 2020–21— the highest number since 2000–01, according to a new joint report published by the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) and the...

By a Biometrica staffer By now, most of us have probably read that on Tuesday, June 21, Senate bargainers reached agreement on an incremental yet necessary bipartisan gun violence bill. The bill is in response to recent deadly mass shootings in Texas...

By a Biometrica staffer Wednesday, May 25, was International Missing Children's Day. It's a day that's dedicated to encouraging parents, guardians, caregivers, and others concerned with the well-being of children to make child safety a priority. The commemoration of this day, per...

By a Biometrica staffer One-and-a half centuries. Over 400 Indigenous boarding schools run by the federal government, with support from religious institutions. The use of systematic militarized and identity-alteration methodologies in an attempt to 'assimilate Indigenous persons.' Corporal punishment to enforce rules...

By a Biometrica staffer On Friday, Feb. 4, the Justice Department announced that Aaron Crawford of Maryland had been sentenced to 20 years in federal prison, followed by 20 years of supervised release. Why? For engaging in what Attorney General Merrick B....

By a Biometrica staffer There's no doubt that combating child sex abuse material (CSAM) is a serious challenge that law enforcement officers, parents, caregivers, and various others involved in or concerned about child safety and protection face. Sample this: Of the 21.7+...

By a Biometrica staffer At Biometrica, child safety and protection has always been at the heart of what we do. We ended 2021 with a look-back special at various issues surrounding this all-important public safety subject that took centerstage through last year....

By a Biometrica staffer At Biometrica, the safety of children has always been a priority. This year, amidst general chaos and anxiety, the safety of children took center stage like never before. Here are some of the relevant issues and news stories...

By a Biometrica staffer On average, a woman or girl is killed by someone in her own family every 11 minutes across the world, according to a report published by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) this month. In...

By Aara Ramesh Going off the sheer volume of content generated about it, if there’s one thing Americans can’t get enough of, it’s a story about a cult. Be that NXIVM, which made headlines a few years ago when it emerged that...

By Aara Ramesh When it comes to gun rights, one demographic proponents of gun control are particularly concerned about is children that live in homes that also have firearms. While the presence of a firearm in the house can be dangerous to...

By a Biometrica staffer In Portsmouth, Virginia, the local police department and the Up Center are reaching out to the public as they seek mentors to help steer youth in the right direction. The two organizations have come together due to an...

By Aara Ramesh Even before the Covid-19 pandemic, the child welfare system was rife with gaps that made children in foster care extra susceptible to abuse. Like with many other societal problems, however, the pandemic only worsened that situation on a number...

By a Biometrica staffer In 2019, the last year for which data is available, a total of 5,998 post-secondary institutions (across almost 11,000 campuses) reported 34,933 criminal offenses to the federal government, and 17,758 offenses related to violence against women, be that...

By a Biometrica staffer As part of their mandate to prevent substance abuse, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) periodically puts out a resource guide titled “Drugs of Abuse.” The latest version from 2020 is meant to serve as a “comprehensive guide” to...

By Aara Ramesh On Wednesday, Oct. 27, the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced that a Virginia man, 26-year-old Zackary Ellis Sanders, had been convicted by a federal jury for producing, receiving, and possessing child sexual abuse material (CSAM). The DOJ alleges that...

By Aara Ramesh It’s not uncommon these days, unfortunately, to see stories of children or toddlers coming upon an unsecured firearm at home and accidentally setting it off. Research from the Gun Violence Archive and the Associated Press found that gun violence...

By a Biometrica staffer Out of the total federal caseload, child sex abuse material (CSAM) production cases account for only a small percentage. Even so, the expansion of digital and mobile technology has led to a 422% spike in the number of...

By Deepti Govind One in 10 people aged 18–25 and one in 30 people aged 13–17 experience homelessness each year. To put it another way, in a classroom of 30 students, at least one will experience homelessness this year, which means they...

By a Biometrica staffer At the end of September, the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) released its 20th annual “Findings on the Worst Forms of Child Labor” report, which analyzed the state of child labor in 131 countries and territories between January and...

By Aara Ramesh The exploitation of children is a real and present problem, one that has only worsened — like many others — as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic. Children are roped into forced labor; they are trafficked for sex; they...

By a Biometrica staffer In 2018, there were 1.2 million emergency department visits for assault in the United States, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says on its website. Over 19,000 people died due to homicides, more than 14,000 of...

By Deepti Govind In the late 1960s, a New York-based attorney named Bertram Hirsch was sent to North Dakota to assist with a custody dispute case on behalf of the Spirit Lake Tribe. At that point, Hirsch was employed by the Association...

By Deepti Govind Historically, animal cruelty was considered an isolated issue — one that didn't really harm the human population. As a result, perhaps, the process of recognizing animal cruelty as a serious violent offense in and of itself developed only slowly...

By Deepti Govind Just three weeks ago, the Department of Justice said a 53-year old Maryland resident, Jeffrey John White, was sentenced to more than 11 years in federal prison for possessing thousands of files of child pornography. When the case was...

By a Biometrica staffer It would not come as any surprise to say that the Covid-19 pandemic pushed most of the world online, particularly children, as schools went virtual under lockdowns and restrictions. This increased children's use of the internet, and has...

By a Biometrica staffer In 2019, lower percentages of students aged 12-18 reported any kind of criminal victimization during the previous six months, compared with 2009, and that included theft and non-fatal violent victimization, a report published by the National Center for...

By a Biometrica staffer The Covid-19 pandemic turned the whole world upside down in a manner of speaking, but for some sections of global society, the impact was darker and more pronounced. Last Tuesday, we gave you a brief overview of the...

By Deepti Govind Child abductions are, thankfully, rare in the United States, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) said in its "Inside the FBI" podcast on May 25, Missing Children's Day. But when it does happen, the statistics tell a terrifying story:...

By Charlotte Spencer Earlier this year we discussed pending legislation in an article titled, “Pending Hate Crime Legislation in Front of Congress,” published April 22, and a February 4 article titled, “More Legal Firepower Proposed in Battle Against Child Abuse.” More has...

By a Biometrica staffer Even one incident of mass violence at a school is one too many. Going by that metric, the United States has had far too many to ignore over the course of the last two decades: from Virginia to...

By Jan Edwards May 25 was International Mission Children’s Day. Globally, more than one million children are reported missing every year. ICMEC considers any child under the age of 18 whose whereabouts are unknown to be “missing.” This includes children who have...