The Waterbury Times|Archives|Sept, 10 2026
One year after The Waterbury Times examined the disproportionate number of Black girls and women reported missing in America, the newest federal data gives us a clearer—and still deeply troubling—picture of the crisis.
Waterbury- One year ago today, The Waterbury Times published Black Girl Lost, an examination of the disproportionate number of Black girls and women reported missing across the United States.
At the time, we reported that nearly 100,000 Black women and girls had been reported missing nationwide in 2022, accounting for more than one-third of all missing females despite Black women representing roughly 14 percent of the nation’s female population.
The question a year later is simple:
Has anything changed?
The newest numbers from the Federal Bureau of Investigation provide part of the answer.
And they show that the problem remains enormous.
75,875 Black Girls Entered Into the FBI’s Missing-Person System in 2025
According to the FBI’s 2025 National Crime Information Center Missing Person and Unidentified Person Statistics, 75,875 Black females between the ages of 0 and 17 were entered into the NCIC Missing Person File during 2025.
That means that, in the FBI’s national database, more than 75,000 Black girls under the age of 18 were the subject of missing-person entries during a single year.
The figure is part of a much larger national picture.
In total, the FBI recorded 498,038 missing-person records entered into NCIC during 2025.
Of those, 305,339 involved juveniles ages 0 through 17.
Black girls accounted for 75,875 of the female juvenile entries.
The numbers demand attention—not simply because they are large, but because behind every entry is a person.
A daughter.
Someone’s granddaughter.
A sister.
Best Friend.
A child whose absence changed someone’s life.
The Number Requires Context
There is an important distinction between a missing-person entry and a person who remains missing.
The FBI’s statistics count records entered into the NCIC system during the year. They do not mean that every person represented by those entries remained missing at the end of 2025.
In fact, the FBI reported that 503,409 missing-person records were purged from the system during 2025.
Those removals can occur for several reasons, including a law enforcement agency locating the person, the individual returning home, or an agency determining that a record was invalid.
The distinction matters.
75,875 is not a count of 75,875 Black girls who remained missing.
It is the number of Black females ages 0–17 represented in missing-person entries made to the FBI’s NCIC system during 2025.
That distinction should never be lost in the discussion.
But neither should the magnitude of the number.
And Thousands Were Still Missing at Year’s End
The FBI also provides another number that tells a different part of the story.
As of December 31, 2025, NCIC contained 88,093 active missing-person records nationwide.
Of those active records, 12,268 were Black females.
In other words, while hundreds of thousands of missing-person records entered the system during the year, more than 12,000 records involving Black females remained active when 2025 ended.
That is a snapshot—not a complete measure of every missing Black woman or girl in America.
But it demonstrates that the problem does not end when a report is filed.
For thousands of families, the case remains open.
The Numbers Have Changed. The Disparity Has Not Disappeared.
Our original Black Girl Lost report examined a troubling disparity in how missing Black women and girls are represented in the national conversation.
The newest FBI statistics allow us to look at the issue through a more precise lens.
In 2025, the FBI recorded:
75,875
Black females ages 0–17
19,771
Black females age 18 and older
95,682
Black females of all ages
Those numbers represent NCIC entries—not unique people who necessarily remained missing.
Still, the scale is impossible to ignore.
And it raises a question that goes beyond statistics:
What happens after a Black girl is reported missing?
Visibility Matters
When a person disappears, time matters.
Information matters.
Public awareness matters.
And visibility matters.
Our original article examined what has become known as “Missing White Woman Syndrome”—the criticism that missing white women and girls can receive significantly more media attention than missing people of color.
The issue isn’t an argument that one missing person matters more than another.
It is the opposite.
Every missing person should matter.
A missing Black girl should generate the same urgency, attention and determination as any other missing child.
Her family should not have to compete with the news cycle to convince the public that her disappearance matters.
Her photograph should not have to go viral before people know her name.
And her case should not become invisible simply because the national media moved on to something else.
What We Know One Year Later
The newest FBI data gives us several concrete facts.
In 2025, nearly half a million missing-person records were entered into the FBI’s NCIC system.
More than 305,000 involved children under 18.
More than 75,000 involved Black girls under 18.
And at the end of the year, more than 12,000 active missing-person records involved Black females.
The data does not tell us everything.
It doesn’t tell us why every person disappeared.
It doesn’t tell us which cases received extensive media coverage.
It doesn’t tell us which families struggled to get attention.
And it does not, by itself, prove that race was the reason any particular case received more or less attention.
But it gives us a baseline from which those questions can—and should—be asked.
One Year Later, We Still Have a Question
When we published Black Girl Lost one year ago, we ended with a simple idea:
When a Black girl goes missing, she is not just a statistic.
One year later, that remains true.
The newest FBI numbers don’t reduce these girls to statistics.
They remind us why the statistics matter.
Behind the numbers are families waiting for answers.
Communities waiting for someone to come home.
And girls whose names deserve to be known.
The Waterbury Times published Black Girl Lost because we believed this was a story worth seeing.
A year later, the numbers tell us it is still a story worth telling.
Because when a Black girl goes missing, America should notice.
And when she comes home, America should know her name.
Source: Federal Bureau of Investigation, 2025 National Crime Information Center (NCIC) Missing Person and Unidentified Person Statistics.
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