Child safety utility InstantAmber linked to an article from the Boston Globe last week about the validity of Amber Alerts and if they actually work. A study from the University of Nevada states that the alerts are not working, maybe even hurting the quest to find missing children.

The lead criminology researcher at the University of Nevada, Timothy Griffin, refers to the Amber Alert system as “crime control theater” and worries that the system may be based more on emotions that actions that may actually work. However, the work of the criminologists only focused on a handful of the Amber Alerts issued, and they also did not have the full report in any of those cases. He still claims that his research is absolute.

Can anything that helps find a missing child be bad?