THE NUMBER EVERYBODY KEEPS REPEATING
There’s a number that has been repeated so many times that many people have stopped questioning what it actually means: nearly 100,000 Black women and girls disappear in America every year. It sounds horrifying, and the problem of missing Black women and girls deserves serious attention. But there’s something equally important that we have to do if we’re going to have an honest conversation about this subject: we have to understand what the numbers actually represent. A statistic can be technically accurate and still be seriously misunderstood when the definition behind the number gets lost.
According to the FBI, 95,682 Black females were entered into the National Crime Information Center’s missing-person system during 2025. That’s an enormous number, but it doesn’t mean that 95,682 Black women and girls were still missing when 2025 ended. An entry means that a missing-person record was placed into the national system during that year. Some of those people were later located, some records were cleared or canceled, and some remained missing. That distinction changes the entire conversation.
The difference between an annual entry and an active missing-person record is extremely important because the two numbers are measuring different things. The annual entry number tells us how many Black females entered the missing-person system during a particular year. The year-end active number gives us a snapshot of records that were still active when that year ended. One measures the flow of cases into the system, while the other measures the cases that remained open at that point in time. If we confuse those two measurements, we can easily turn accurate government statistics into a statement the statistics themselves don’t support.
So let’s focus on the number that answers the question people are really asking when they say, “How many are actually still missing?” At the end of 2025, the FBI reported 12,268 active missing-person records involving Black females. At the end of 2024, there were 13,562. In 2023, there were 14,123. In 2022, there were 14,627. In 2021, there were 14,323, and in 2020 there were 13,899. These numbers are considerably different from the annual entry totals, but they’re still deeply significant because they represent thousands of people whose missing-person records remained active when each year ended.
That’s the part of this conversation that deserves our attention. Twelve thousand two hundred sixty-eight active Black-female missing-person records at the end of 2025 isn’t a small number, and correcting the popular “100,000” statement doesn’t make the underlying problem disappear. Quite the opposite. It gives us a more honest number to investigate. Behind every active record is a human being whose whereabouts remained unresolved in the national system, along with family members and loved ones who may still have questions that haven’t been answered.
THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN AN ENTRY AND AN ACTIVE CASE
The word “entry” sounds simple, but it can create a tremendous amount of confusion. When law enforcement enters someone into NCIC as a missing person, that record becomes part of the national database. The record can remain active until the person is located or the entering agency cancels the record. That means somebody entered into the system in January could be located in February, while another person entered in December could still have an active record when the year ends.
That’s why adding together annual entry totals and presenting the result as the number of people who remain missing would be misleading. The database is constantly changing. New records are being entered while other records are being cleared, canceled, or otherwise removed from active status. The annual entry number measures how many records entered the system during a particular period, while the active year-end number gives us a snapshot of what remained unresolved in the database at that particular point.
This distinction matters because sensational numbers travel much faster than explanations. Someone can hear that nearly 100,000 Black females were entered into the missing-person system and repeat that nearly 100,000 Black women and girls are currently missing. Those statements sound similar, but they don’t mean the same thing. One describes annual database activity, while the other makes a claim about people who remain missing.
The more accurate statement is much more powerful because it can withstand scrutiny: in 2025, the FBI recorded 95,682 missing-person entries involving Black females, while 12,268 Black-female missing-person records remained active at the end of that year. That’s the distinction we need to carry into every conversation about this subject.
Correcting the number doesn’t weaken the issue. It strengthens it because now we’re talking about what the data actually say instead of what we wish the data said.
BLACK GIRLS ARE A MAJOR PART OF THE ANNUAL ENTRIES
There’s another part of this conversation that cannot be ignored. Black children are included in these statistics, and the annual FBI numbers show just how large the number of Black girls entering the missing-person system can be. In 2025, 75,875 Black females ages 0 through 17 were entered into the missing-person system. That represents the overwhelming majority of the Black-female entries recorded that year.
But once again, we have to be careful with the language. Those 75,875 entries don’t mean that 75,875 Black girls remained missing. They represent missing-person records entered during the year. Some girls were located quickly, some were located later, and others may have remained missing. The national annual report doesn’t give us a simple public table showing exactly how many of those girls were still missing at the end of 2025.
That limitation shouldn’t stop us from caring about the issue. If anything, it should make us demand better information. A Black girl who leaves home because of family conflict is still a child whose whereabouts became unknown. A girl who runs away because she’s dealing with problems that adults failed to see is still vulnerable. A child who disappears under suspicious circumstances deserves an immediate and serious investigation. The circumstances surrounding each disappearance can be different, but the child at the center of the case remains somebody’s daughter, somebody’s granddaughter, somebody’s sister, and somebody’s loved one.
The FBI’s missing-person system also includes different circumstances, and a missing-person entry doesn’t automatically mean kidnapping, trafficking, murder, or stranger abduction. Some cases involve runaways, endangered people, involuntary disappearances, disabilities, catastrophes, and other circumstances. That’s why we cannot look at one giant national number and assume every case has the same explanation.
But we also shouldn’t make the opposite mistake and use those differences to dismiss the problem. The fact that every case has a different story doesn’t make the people behind the cases any less important.
WHAT THE NUMBERS ACTUALLY SHOW
The annual entry numbers are enormous and remarkably persistent. From 2020 through 2025, the FBI recorded more than 89,000 Black-female missing-person entries every year. There were 90,333 in 2020, 89,020 in 2021, 97,924 in 2022, 103,079 in 2023, 97,577 in 2024, and 95,682 in 2025.
Those figures show that the missing-person system has been receiving tens of thousands of Black-female entries every year. But when we shift our attention from annual entries to active year-end records, the picture changes. There were 13,899 active Black-female records at the end of 2020, 14,323 in 2021, 14,627 in 2022, 14,123 in 2023, 13,562 in 2024, and 12,268 in 2025.
That’s why the phrase “100,000 Black women disappear every year” needs to be handled carefully. The underlying FBI data show that roughly 90,000 to more than 100,000 Black-female missing-person entries were recorded annually during this period, but they do not show that the same number of Black women and girls remained missing.
There’s also another part of the picture that deserves recognition. At the end of 2025, the FBI reported 13,939 active missing-person records involving Black males. That means Black boys and men are also heavily represented in the active missing-person population. Focusing on Black girls and women doesn’t require us to erase Black boys and men from the conversation. A missing child is a missing child, and every family deserves answers.
WHAT WE STILL DON’T KNOW
This is where we have to be honest about the limits of national statistics. The FBI’s year-end data provide the total number of active Black-female missing-person records, but they don’t provide a complete national table showing exactly how many of those 12,268 active records involved girls under 18 and how many involved adult women.
That means I’m not going to manufacture a number just because it would make the story more dramatic. If the federal data don’t provide that exact breakdown, then the responsible thing to do is say so. We can report the number of Black girls entered into the system during the year, and we can report the total number of active Black-female records at year-end, but we shouldn’t pretend those two datasets answer a question they weren’t designed to answer.
We also can’t use the national public report to tell the complete story of what happened to every person whose record was eventually cleared. A record can be removed from active status after someone is located, after an agency cancels the record, or under other circumstances. The national summary doesn’t give us a complete person-by-person outcome report for every Black-female entry.
That means we still have important questions that require deeper investigation. How many were found alive? How many were found deceased? How many returned home on their own? How many were victims of violence? How many cases remain unresolved after months or years? How old were the people whose cases remain active? How long have their cases been open? And are there particular communities where unresolved cases are more concentrated?
Those are the questions that can take this conversation beyond viral statistics and into meaningful investigation.
WE CANNOT ASSUME ONE CAUSE
There’s another trap we need to avoid. A missing-person statistic doesn’t automatically prove trafficking, kidnapping, murder, sexual exploitation, or stranger abduction. Those crimes absolutely occur, and when evidence points toward them, they deserve serious investigation. But a missing-person database isn’t the same thing as a trafficking database or a homicide database.
That’s why I’m not interested in taking thousands of missing-person entries and assigning one explanation to all of them. Real life doesn’t work that way. People disappear for different reasons, and the circumstances of one case may have nothing to do with the circumstances of another.
What I want is something more demanding than a conspiracy theory. I want information. I want case-level information. I want to know the ages of the people involved, where they disappeared, when they disappeared, how long their cases remained active, and what ultimately happened to them.
If someone was found alive, that matters. If someone was found deceased, that matters. If somebody returned home, that matters. If a person remains missing years later, that matters even more. Every one of those outcomes tells us something different about the problem.
WHERE ARE THE STATE AND CITY NUMBERS?
People naturally want to know where these cases are concentrated. Which states have the highest numbers? Which cities have the highest numbers? Which communities have the greatest number of unresolved Black-female cases? Those are legitimate questions, but the national FBI year-end report doesn’t provide a clean ranking of active Black-female missing-person cases by city and state.
So I’m not going to create one.
If we’re serious about truth, we have to resist the temptation to fill empty spaces in the data with assumptions. A state-by-state or city-by-city examination would require pulling together jurisdiction-level information and making sure the definitions match. Otherwise, we could end up comparing one jurisdiction’s reporting practices against another jurisdiction’s reporting practices and mistakenly treating the difference as proof that one place has more disappearances.
The national data can show us the broad picture. The local data are what we need to understand the individual communities.
That’s where the next level of research needs to go. We need to move from national statistics to actual cases. Who disappeared? How old were they? Where were they last seen? When were they reported missing? How long did it take for the case to be entered? Were they found? Were they found alive? Were they found deceased? Was an arrest made? Was the case closed? Or does the family still have no answer?
Those questions tell us far more than a headline ever could.
THE NUMBER IS STILL SERIOUS AFTER WE CORRECT IT
Some people may hear this discussion and think that correcting the “100,000” number somehow minimizes the crisis. It doesn’t. In fact, I believe the opposite is true. If we want people to take this issue seriously, then we have to give them numbers that can survive scrutiny.
If I tell you that 100,000 Black women are currently missing and someone can easily demonstrate that the number actually refers to annual missing-person entries, then the credibility of the entire conversation gets damaged. Someone who wants to dismiss the problem now has an easy opening to say the statistics were exaggerated.
But if I tell you that the FBI recorded 95,682 Black-female missing-person entries during 2025 and that 12,268 Black-female missing-person records remained active at the end of that year, there’s nothing misleading about that statement. Those numbers can be checked. They can be challenged. They can be studied. And they can lead us toward better questions.
The truth doesn’t need inflation.
The truth needs investigation.
WE NEED TO KNOW WHO CAME HOME
Statistics can become cold when we forget the people behind them. Every number represents a human being, but an active missing-person record represents something even more painful: somebody whose case remained open when the calendar changed.
A mother may still be waiting for a daughter. A father may still be looking for answers. A sister may still be checking her phone. A child may still be asking when someone they love is coming home. For those families, the distinction between an entry and an active case isn’t academic. It’s personal.
That’s why the 12,268 active Black-female records at the end of 2025 deserve attention. Not because we know that every one of those cases involved a predator. Not because we know that every person was trafficked. Not because we know that every disappearance involved violence. We don’t know those things from this dataset.
What we do know is that thousands of Black-female missing-person records remained active at the end of the year.
And that should be enough to make us ask what happened.
WE HAVE TO STOP REPEATING NUMBERS WITHOUT EXPLAINING THEM
Before anybody repeats a missing-person statistic, we should ask a simple question: What exactly does this number measure? Does it represent annual entries? Does it represent active cases? Does it represent children? Adults? Both? Is it national? Statewide? Local? Does it represent people who were reported missing, people who remained missing, or people who were never found?
Those questions aren’t technicalities. They’re the difference between reporting information and accidentally creating misinformation.
When we confuse annual entries with active cases, we can make a real problem sound different from what the data actually show. And when that happens, people who already want to dismiss the issue can use the confusion as a reason to dismiss everything.
I don’t want that.
I want the numbers sharp enough that they can’t be knocked down because we misunderstood what they meant.
THE QUESTION WE SHOULD REALLY BE ASKING
So the question shouldn’t simply be, “How many Black women disappear every year?” The better question is, “How many Black women and girls are reported missing, how many are found, how many remain missing, and what happens to those cases?”
That question takes us much closer to the truth.
I want to know how many were reported missing. I want to know how many came home. I want to know how many were found alive. I want to know how many were found deceased. I want to know how many cases remain open. I want to know how long those cases have remained open. And I want to know whether the families connected to those cases received the attention and answers they deserved.
That’s a much deeper conversation than simply repeating a viral number.
It’s also a more difficult conversation because it requires patience, records, investigation, and accountability. But if we really care about missing Black women and girls, then we should be willing to do more than repeat a statistic. We should want to know the stories behind the statistic.
THE NUMBERS SHOULD LEAD US BACK TO THE PEOPLE
The tragedy of statistics is that they can make people disappear twice. First, someone disappears physically. Then, if we reduce that person to a number and stop there, that person can disappear from public attention as well.
I don’t want that.
I want the numbers to lead us back to the people. I want the statistics to make us ask questions about the human beings represented by those statistics. I want us to understand that 95,682 annual entries and 12,268 active records aren’t interchangeable numbers. They tell us different things about the same larger problem.
The annual entries show us how many Black-female missing-person records entered the national system during the year. The active records show us how many Black-female records remained active at the end of the year. Neither number tells the entire story, but together they show us why this subject deserves serious attention.
The facts don’t need to be exaggerated to be disturbing.
They’re disturbing enough as they are.
THIS IS WHERE THE CONVERSATION NEEDS TO GO
The next step shouldn’t be another viral statistic. The next step should be deeper research into the cases themselves. We need age breakdowns. We need state-level information. We need city-level information. We need recovery information. We need to know which cases remain open year after year. We need to know what happens after someone is reported missing and what happens before that person is located.
And we need to keep our eyes on the children.
A missing Black girl isn’t simply another entry in a federal database. She’s somebody’s daughter. She has a name, a face, a voice, a personality, dreams, friends, family, and a life that existed before the word “missing” became attached to her name.
That’s why I don’t want inflated numbers.
I want accurate numbers that force us to look closer.
I want numbers that lead us to the cases.
I want the cases to lead us to the people.
And I want the people to come home.
THE TRUTH DOESN’T NEED TO BE EXAGGERATED
If we’re going to talk about missing Black women and girls, then let’s talk about them honestly. Let’s stop turning annual database entries into a claim that everybody remained missing. Let’s stop treating every disappearance as proof of trafficking or kidnapping without evidence. Let’s stop pretending the FBI database answers every question. And let’s stop acting like correcting a statistic means we’re defending the problem.
The truth is serious enough.
Thousands of Black-female missing-person records remained active at the end of 2025. Tens of thousands of Black females entered the missing-person system during that year. Black boys and men also remained heavily represented among active missing-person records. And behind every one of those numbers are human beings whose stories deserve more than a statistic.
So let’s get the numbers right. Let’s follow the cases. Let’s find out who came home. Let’s find out who didn’t. And most importantly, let’s make sure that when a Black girl or woman disappears, America doesn’t simply enter her name into a database and move on.
Because numbers can tell us that somebody is missing.
But numbers alone can’t bring somebody home.
