The Lindbergh case turned kidnapping into a job for the FBI
After the heavily publicised Lindbergh kidnapping of 1932, Congress passed the Federal Kidnapping Act, letting the FBI investigate such cases just as the bureau was growing in size and power. Carrying a victim across a state line now made the crime a federal matter.
Legally, kidnapping means moving a person and confining them against their will, whether by force, threats or trickery. That movement is what separates it from false imprisonment, which confines without carrying away. In England, where kidnapping is a common law offence, a 1984 ruling listed four ingredients: taking or carrying someone away, by force or fraud, without their consent and without lawful excuse. For children, what matters is the child's own consent, not the parents'; the judge added that juries should rarely find a child under fourteen capable of giving it. English courts may impose any term of imprisonment that is not excessive, while Australian law caps it at 25 years.
Motives vary. Ransom is the classic one, often pursued by gangs or armed groups; one study found Colombian armed groups use ransom kidnapping to enforce their own local tax systems. In express kidnapping, common in parts of Latin America, captors demand a small, quickly payable sum or march a victim to a cash machine. A tiger kidnapping, named for the long stalking that precedes it, holds a hostage to force someone else to commit a crime. Virtual kidnapping needs no captive at all, only a phone call convincing someone that a relative has been seized.
History supplies grimmer examples. Kidnapping has long served as a route to slavery, and in the nineteenth century shanghaiing forced men onto merchant ships as crews. Bride kidnapping survives among some nomadic peoples of Central Asia and has resurged in Kyrgyzstan since the Soviet collapse.
In the United States, several things discourage the crime: stiff sentences, cooperation among police agencies, public alert systems such as Amber alerts, and the sheer difficulty of collecting a ransom without being watched or caught.
Source: Kidnapping
