Law: Frenzy of Fingerprinting

Worried parents rush to get a record of their children

The lines of wide-eyed children at five shopping malls in Broward County, Fla., last week were not waiting for the opening of Return of the Jedi. Instead, their parents had brought them to mark a somber occasion, Missing Children Day, in sober fashion: by voluntarily getting fingerprinted. The phenomenon has swept communities throughout the nation; it has sometimes been spurred by a local tragedy, sometimes by the many articles about missing children or the recent film Without a Trace, based loosely on the disappearance...

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