Missing or lost — a few remarks on the legal aspects of searching for missing persons in Poland

Abstract

Every missing persons case raises a number of legal, criminological, and psycho-logical issues. Regardless of how we define a “missing person”, an appropriate policy must be adopted by state institutions to react appropriately. This includes the creation of guidelines on who is eligible to make a missing persons report, who is competent to undertake missing person investigations (e.g. police force), but also which of the avail-able investigative methods and tools should be actually used when searching for a mis-sing person.