It’s complicated: The level of risk assigned to a missing person, time they were missing for, and the tasks performed by police investigators.

This study examines the number of tasks police investigators perform by the level of risk assigned to cases and the length of time the investigations take to resolve. It analyses 40,091 solved cases from 2019 using data from eight English police forces, as part of a wider research project of missing person investigations demand on police resources. The findings show that (1) low and high risk with a search area cases have a relationship to the duration of the investigation; (2) there is a relationship between the risk classification and the number of tasks assigned to the case; (3) the longer the investigation, the more tasks it will generate; (4) There are differences between forces. The study has also revealed that the relationships between some of these factors are not as linear or as straightforward as might be expected when they are taken together. This suggests there is a relationship between case duration, risk classification and the number of tasks assigned with a given missing person case.