Children’s Justice Project

In partnership with the U.S. Department of Justice’s (DOJ) Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP), the goal of the Children’s Justice Project is to provide resources for the unidentified human remains of children. Under the direction of the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children’s Forensic Services Unit, the goal for this project is to provide resources to accelerate the identification of children who have been found deceased but not yet identified within the service area of the United States. Building on evidence-based practices for unidentified human remains (UHR) cases of suspected children, the three primary deliverables of this two-year project will include to 1) Establish relationships and procedures to identify unidentified child remains, 2) Develop and implement best practices for unidentified child remains casework, and 3) Contribute to federal conversations to sustain improvement efforts. Key activities will include assessing all current cases in the NCMEC database for completeness of information and obtaining/inputting incomplete information on cases, cataloging information for appropriate law enforcement follow-up, developing protocols for solvability to determine priority of current cases in the NCMEC database, and sharing information with OJJDP about the status of the project ranging from participating in monthly meetings with the DOJ Working Group on Unidentified Human Remains to providing monthly written updates to holding periodic briefings for the OJJDP Administrator. The expected outcomes of this work relate to intended program beneficiaries, including victims, their families, communities, and professionals working to prevent and investigate these cases. Successful implementation may lead to potential outcomes such as identifying unknown deceased children, finding missing children, and developing leads on child abduction homicides. NCMEC will track statistics and share accomplishments while supporting transparency among intended beneficiaries, including families, forensic professionals, nongovernmental organizations, and law enforcement to bolster efforts to identify as many of these children as possible.