Minority ethnic individuals are disproportionately represented in missing persons incidents in the UK. Despite this, practitioners currently lack evidence-based tools to effectively gather information to advance missing persons investigations.
In collaboration with police and search and rescue practitioner partners, the research team will examine how ethnicity impacts interviews when reporting a missing person. The team will also develop and empirically test an innovative and tailored interviewing approach for use in incidents involving ethnically diverse missing persons.
A significant number of people go missing in the UK, with a report filed every two minutes. Ethnic minorities are disproportionately affected. Recent police statistics indicate that a person’s ethnicity may lead to a lower perceived risk and a decreased likelihood of their case being resolved. Effective information gathering in missing persons reporting interviews is crucial for determining safeguarding risks and an equitable police response. Yet, police use of evidence based interviewing techniques in this context remains limited.
Responding to these issues, this research project will examine how ethnicity affects reporting and information gathering in current practice and in simulated missing person interviews. In partnership with practitioners, the research team will develop and empirically test an innovative, tailored evidence-based interviewing approach for use in missing persons incidents involving ethnically diverse missing persons.
The overall research aim is to enhance missing persons reporting interviews to safeguard vulnerable individuals, especially those from diverse ethnic backgrounds in missing persons incidents. Ultimately, this project can contribute to improving and building an evidence-based response by police and search and rescue professionals in investigations involving ethnically diverse missing persons.
The interdisciplinary research team, in collaboration with police and search and rescue partner organisations, will:
- Consult partners to understand current missing persons interviewing practices and the specific challenges when interviewing ethnically diverse individuals in this context.
- Co-create research materials with practitioner partners. These will be used to empirically examine, for the first time, how ethnicity impacts the information reported in simulated missing person interviews.
- Test the effectiveness of a co-created tailored interviewing approach. The team will do this by using a mock-witness experiment to see how well it gathers information about a missing person and their risk factors.
Lead investigator
- Dr Alejandra De La Fuente Vilar (University of Portsmouth)
Co-investigators
- Dr Stefana Juncu (University of Portsmouth)
- Dr Craig Collie (University of Portsmouth)
- Dr Gary Dalton (University of Portsmouth)
Project partners
The research partners are Hampshire and Isle of Wight Constabulary and the Bay Area Search and Rescue Council.
