To reauthorize the Missing Children’s Assistance Act, and for other purposes.
Analysis under review: This bill has generated analysis that may be too generic or incomplete. Clause-level evidence remains available below.
Summary
What This Bill Does
This bill reauthorizes and modernizes the Missing Children's Assistance Act. It updates terminology (replacing "child pornography" with "child sexual abuse material," "hotline" with "call center," "tipline" with "CyberTipline"), expands the mandate of the national center for missing and exploited children (NCMEC), and increases authorized funding from 40 million to 49.3 million dollars annually for fiscal years 2024-2028.
Who Benefits and How
Missing and sexually exploited children benefit from expanded support services including recovery counseling, family/peer support, and assistance removing child sexual abuse material from the internet. Parents and families of missing children benefit from updated call center services, the AMBER Alert Secondary Distribution Program, and educational resources on internet safety threats like cyberbullying, sextortion, and online enticement. Law enforcement agencies benefit from expanded technical assistance, public records database searching capabilities, and forensic partnership resources to locate missing children and identify offenders. Children in state-sponsored foster care benefit from new tracking and reporting requirements for children missing from state or tribal child welfare systems.
Who Bears the Burden and How
The national center grant recipient (NCMEC) bears expanded operational responsibilities including managing the CyberTipline, AMBER Alert program, support services, internet content removal assistance, and new reporting requirements. The Administrator (of OJJDP) bears oversight responsibilities for forensic partnership criteria. Federal taxpayers bear the increased cost, with authorization rising from 40 million to 49.3 million dollars per year, with up to 41.5 million for the national center.
Key Provisions
- Updates terminology throughout to replace outdated terms: "child pornography" becomes "child sexual abuse material," "hotline" becomes "call center," "tipline" becomes "CyberTipline" (Section 2)
- Adds AMBER Alert Secondary Distribution Program management to national center duties (Section 2)
- Expands technical assistance to include searching public records databases and open source data to locate abductors and recover children (Section 2)
- Creates new support services for victims including internet content removal assistance, recovery counseling, and family support (Section 2)
- Adds internet safety education covering cyberbullying, child sex trafficking, sextortion, and online enticement (Section 2)
- Requires new reporting on children missing from state/tribal child welfare systems and likely sex trafficking victims (Section 2)
- Requires forensic partnership criteria and annual review of forensic resources (Section 2)
- Reauthorizes funding at 49.3 million dollars per year for fiscal years 2024-2028 (Section 2)
Evidence Chain:
This summary is generated from the full bill text using AI analysis. Expand "Detailed Analysis" below for identified beneficiaries/burden bearers.
At a Glance
What This Bill Does
Reauthorizes and modernizes the Missing Children's Assistance Act by updating terminology, expanding services for missing and sexually exploited children, adding internet safety and content removal provisions, improving foster care tracking, and increasing authorized funding through 2028.
Key Policy Areas
Criminal Justice, Children and Families, Technology, Government Operations
Primary Purpose
Reauthorizes and modernizes the Missing Children's Assistance Act by updating terminology, expanding services for missing and sexually exploited children, adding internet safety and content removal provisions, improving foster care tracking, and increasing authorized funding through 2028.
Policy Domains
Missing Children's Assistance Reauthorization Act of 2023
Identified Gains
Contextual inference, no direct clause citation- Missing and sexually exploited children
- Parents and families of missing children
- Law enforcement agencies
- Children in state/tribal foster care systems
Contextual inference, no direct clause citation
Identified Costs
Contextual inference, no direct clause citation- National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (expanded mandate)
- OJJDP Administrator (oversight)
- Federal taxpayers (increased authorization)
Contextual inference, no direct clause citation
Sponsors
Legislative Progress
Enrolled (Passed Congress)Passed Senate (inferred from es version)
Passed House (inferred from enr version)
Enrolled Bill (inferred from enr version)
Mr. Durbin (for himself and Mr. Graham) introduced the following …
Stakeholder Effects
cui bono?How this legislation distributes effects. Mention counts reflect frequency, not effect magnitude.
National Center for Missing & Exploited Children
General public, Missing and exploited children
Bill Structure & Actor Mappings
Who is "The Secretary" in each section?
- "the_grantee"
- → National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC)
- "the_administrator"
- → Administrator of the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP)
Key Definitions
Terms defined in this bill
Has the meaning given the term 'child pornography' in section 2256 of title 18, United States Code. Replaces prior terminology throughout the Act.
The renamed electronic tipline (previously just 'tipline') operated by the national center for reporting child sexual exploitation.
We use a combination of our own taxonomy and classification in addition to large language models to assess meaning and potential beneficiaries. High confidence means strong textual evidence. Always verify with the original bill text.
Learn more about our methodology