An exploration of police discretion in the identification of child victims of county lines drug trafficking

ABSTRACT

In recent years, children’s involvement in County Lines drug trafficking (CL) has been of increasing concern to national government, the police and safeguarding agencies. However, few studies have explored how child victims of county lines are identified by the police. This exploratory research study provides insights into the police decision-making process for identifying child victims of CL. Interviews with eight police officers from three police forces in South England were conducted to understand how they came to recognise children involved in CL as victims and in turn, how this related to decisions to refer children into the UK’s formal victim-identification system – the National Referral Mechanism (NRM). The research found decisions to recognise children as victims and later refer them into the NRM varied amongst the police officers in the sample. This was because officers had different understandings of what constitutes modern slavery, considered different factors in their decisions about signs of exploitation, displayed varying attitudes towards children involved in CL and viewed their duties in CL cases differently to one another. The research also identifies various barriers in the process of victim-identification. The most significant barrier appeared to be the over-reliance on victim accounts, compounded by the inability of children to disclose exploitation. The notion that children involved in CL may have experienced differing levels of exploitation and display varying levels of willingness to facilitate CL drug dealing, further complicated understandings of what constitutes a victim and in turn an NRM referral.

KEYWORDS:

• County lines
• child criminal exploitation
• victim/offender overlap
• National Referral Mechanism

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The United Nations Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children was signed in Palermo, Italy in November 2000. It is a legally-binding instrument which is a supplement to the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime. Countries that ratify the protocol must criminalise human trafficking and develop anti-trafficking laws, see: https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/Documents/ProfessionalInterest/ProtocolonTrafficking.pdf

2 CCE is an integral part of the process of recruiting and maintaining children’s involvement in CL. It occurs when a child is coerced, controlled, manipulated or deceived into perpetrating crime (Home Office, 2018).

3 Information obtained from research interviews

4 Information obtained from research interviews and screening for guidance

5 McLean et al., (2020), note that dealers may distribute drugs to children under the pretence that they are free. This can cause children to incur debt due to their personal drug use, which they are forced to pay this back over an indefinite period by dealing drugs out of their county. Debt bondage may also occur when children are robbed of the drugs in their possession and forced to work indefinitely to replay the value of drugs stolen (CPS, 2022). CLCG may also stage these robberies.

6 Most commonly used to describe the process whereby the homes of vulnerable people are used as a base to sell drugs by CL groups (Spicer et al., 2019).

7 A pre-paid, inexpensive phone that is not typically registered to a user. This makes it harder to trace the user.

8 The Domestic Abuse and Honour Based Violence (DASH) tool provides a means to identify and assess and manage the level of risk to a victim, see: https://www.dashriskchecklist.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/DASH-2009.pdf.

9 From the Modern Slavery Act (2015) with minor rewording for clarity.