Protecting Children & Seniors

California Attorney General

The Attorney General has a responsibility for protecting children and seniors from harm. This responsibility comes in many forms:

·Investigating and prosecuting physical elder abuse committed by employees against patients in elder care facilities.

·Investigating and prosecuting skilled nursing homes, hospitals, and residential care facilities for adopting policies or promoting practices that lead to neglect and poor quality of care.

·Conducting surprise, on-site inspections of California’s skilled nursing facilities.

·Enforcing Megan’s Law, which gives access to information on more than 63,000 persons required to register in California as sex offenders.

·Providing information from the Child Abuse Central Index (CACI) to aid Law Enforcement and Child Welfare

·The goal is simple – to prevent the unscrupulous and the criminal from preying on the most vulnerable among us.

Missing Persons Unit

·The Missing and Unidentified Persons Unit helps law enforcement agencies locate missing persons or identify unknown live and deceased persons.

Services include:

·Searchable database for missing persons https://oag.ca.gov/missing

In California, a missing person is someone whose whereabouts is unknown to the reporting party. This includes any child who may have run away, been taken involuntary or may be in need of assistance. It includes a child illegally taken, held or hidden by a parent or non-parent family member (See California Penal Code Sections 277-280).

There is NO waiting period for reporting a person missing. All California police and sheriffs’ departments must accept any report, including a report by telephone, of a missing person, including runaways, without delay and will give priority to the handling of the report.

Schools are part of the network to help find missing children, not only through notices required to be given to a public-school district or private school within 10 days of a child’s disappearance but also through use of our Missing Person Bulletin.

By making photographs of missing persons available, we seek to aid in the identification and recovery of missing persons. According to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, one in six missing children are recovered as a direct result of someone recognizing their photo and notifying authorities. We also offer resources on this website for locating missing persons and safeguarding your children.

The following offers a summary of some of our programs. Further information is available by selecting the program categories on the left menu.

Publication of missing person bulletins and monthly posters (Subscribe to Bulletins) https://oag.ca.gov/subscribe

Missing Persons Search

A searchable database of missing persons allows you to look for a missing person by name, description, county and several other categories which a subset of all persons is reported as missing by law enforcement in the State of California.

DATA LIMITATIONS: This database is a subset of all persons reported as missing by law enforcement in the State of California.

·Missing Children Clearinghouse

·The Clearinghouse provides a nationwide, toll-free hotline to receive tips on the whereabouts of missing persons. Call toll-free: 1-800-222-FIND (1-800-222-3463)