[cynicalsecurity]

20 years ago the chance that someone could steal or abuse a child on or from the way to school was way much higher. People have already started forgetting about it. No phone = no way to track back the criminal or the crime.

[ImJamal]

Kids should be able to get their phone back when they leave the school. This means if they are kidnapped, either a kidnapper went onto campus and kidnapped the kid or the kid left the campus without retrieving their phone. It also assumes the kidnapper would allow a victim to keep their phone, which would be quite the dumb decision.

None of this seems very likely...

[prmoustache]

Source of your data over 20 years?

If you look at nonfamily child abductions, most of them involve kids between 0 and 5. Also in a significant proportion of abduction, the kid is not even targeted as it involve parents leaving the kid in a car and the car is stolen.

[micromacrofoot]

why exclude family? that's the primary case is it not?

[prmoustache]

Because I guess a family abduction involve a good knowledge of the victim/behavior and I would guess the first thing the abductor would do is making sure he isn't tracked by getting rid of the phone and not using their own in a radius around the scene of the abduction.

Quite a different set of parameters than abductors targetting random kids in a gas station and driving away with the car.