Missing Persons Identification Act Becomes Law


Missing Persons Identification Act Becomes Law

COOK COUNTY, IL – Legislation championed by Cook County Sheriff Thomas J. Dart that creates new guidelines for missing persons investigations is now state law.

SB 24, the Missing Persons Identification Act, sponsored by Sen. Michael Hastings in the Senate and Rep. Debbie Meyers-Martin in the House, will require law enforcement to:

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Immediately take a report when they are notified of a missing person and enter it into the Law Enforcement Agencies Data System (LEADS).

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Eliminate the practice of observing a waiting period before taking a missing persons report.

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Collect existing fingerprint records, dental records, photographs, and other biometrics for purposes of publishing the information in the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System (NamUs), a federal database, if the person remains missing for 60 days.

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Collect fingerprint records of the missing person and search them against all available repositories at the local, state, and national levels. This is opposed to only searching local criminal databases which limits results to those who have been involved in the criminal justice system.

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Keep missing persons cases active with their agency, and in all applicable databases, until the person returns or is located.

The bill’s guidelines draw from Sheriff’s Police detectives’ experiences and skill sets from reopening the John Wayne Gacy serial killings to identify the unidentified victims. After re-opening the investigation in 2011, detectives saw firsthand how often missing person cases were incomplete or overlooked.

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Detectives continuing to see similar patterns in current missing person cases, as well as outcry from the community that these cases were receiving inefficient attention, led to Sheriff Dart forming the Missing Persons Project in 2021. This unit uses all contemporary investigative and forensic methods, tools, and databases, including NamUs, to locate missing women. To date, the unit has closed more than 40 cases.

Governor JB Pritzker signed the bill into law on Aug. 15. It will go into effect Jan. 1, 2026.

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