Nick Lampson: “Mr. Speaker, I rise this afternoon to talk about H.R. 1915, Jennifer's Law, which would help parents of missing children…”

“Mr. Speaker, I rise this afternoon to talk about H.R. 1915, Jennifer's Law, which would help parents of missing children bring closure to their nightmare and begin the healing process. As my colleague, the gentleman from New York (Mr. Lazio) just said, the Committee on the Judiciary is to be commended and he, too, is to be commended for the work that he has done in bringing this bill to the floor of the House of Representatives, and to make sure that we can do everything that we can to correct the shortcomings that exist in present law. Under current law, States are required to report information on missing children to the FBI so that data can be entered into the National Crime Information Center, NCIC, their missing persons file. However, States are not required to report the information to the NCIC's Unidentified Person File whenever they recover an unidentified body. Unfortunately, a logical and complete cross-referencing of the missing person file and the unidentified person file does not currently exist. Every week unidentified bodies of children are found, but the parents of missing children are not contacted to make positive identifications.”