Young drug couriers caught up in disjointed police response

• Children increasingly used to move drugs from big cities to towns and villages
• “County lines” operations blamed for rising violent crime in London
• Experts bemoan lack of a consistent approach across UK

A well-practised routine begins when police in Oxford arrest a teenager from Birmingham who has been carrying heroin 80 miles from his home city.

An officer from Thames Valley Police, which covers Oxford, will contact West Midlands Police’s Birmingham gangs and organised crime unit. While the teenager may face prosecution, police officers and children’s services workers will focus primarily on trying to glean intelligence from the youngster about the drugs gang that ordered him to transport and sell the heroin to buyers in Oxford. They will also devise plans to loosen the gang’s hold on the teenager.

If the arrest happens in another city, however, events may unfold very differently. Children caught up in moving heroin or crack cocaine for gangs can face serious criminal charges that take no account of the coercion or fear that led them to become drug couriers. In Swindon or elsewhere in Wiltshire, a youngster may even return home without his shoes owing to Wiltshire Police’s tactic of seizing expensive trainers as proceeds of crime.

The starkly contrasting approaches pursued by police forces in response to the fast growing phenomenon of organised crime using children as young as eight to move drugs from big cities to buyers in smaller urban centres as well as rural locations, highlights how Britain is struggling to figure out how to tackle the problem effectively.

More than 1,000 drugs operations use children

The National Crime Agency estimates the UK currently has more than 1,000 drug dealing operations of this kind — dubbed county lines — where children are distributing heroin and other illegal substances, compared with 700 last year. The scourge is being blamed for helping fuel the big rise in violent crime in London and other cities over the past 18 months.

Gangs use children as couriers to avoid the risks of being caught in possession of drugs themselves and because youngsters are less likely than adults to be stopped and searched by police. The Children’s Society, a charity, said county lines referred to how children were often made to travel across counties, and used dedicated mobile phone lines to supply drugs.

West Midlands Police and some other forces, as well as many local authorities, view the problem as child exploitation, with youngsters controlled by unscrupulous adults. But other forces, such as Wiltshire Police, take a hardline approach with the children.

Joe Caluori, a councillor who oversees children and youth services at London’s Islington council, bemoaned the lack of a “joined-up approach” to ensure organisations across the UK consistently treat the problem as a child welfare issue.

Youngsters ‘groomed’ by older gang members

“Far too many people who are involved are treated as little gangsters or criminals,” he said. “Yet they’ve been groomed carefully by older gang members, to transfer the risk down the chain to the young people and move it away from themselves.”

In a typical county lines operation, a city-based gang’s leaders will have taken an order for drugs by mobile phone. A teenager working with the gang will then be given a drugs package and sent to a distant town, either by public transport or in a stolen car.

Vince O’Brien, head of drugs operations at the NCA, told a briefing in parliament in September that he estimated there were county lines operations in all 45 police force areas in the UK. When he first looked at the problem in 2015, just seven forces reported an issue.

“We see huge levels of violence from gangs moving into the market and taking over the market in some places,” said Mr O’Brien.

George Booth, a detective constable at Wiltshire Police, defended his force’s tough approach to the young couriers, which among other things involves confiscating their trainers. The force hoped the tactic might have some impact because being arrested seemed not to stop them, he said.

“For some of these young people, these trainers or designer clothes can be seen as a status symbol, and so losing that is pretty difficult for them to deal with,” he added.

‘Young people are both victims and offenders’

Chief Inspector Nick Dale of West Midlands Police acknowledged the county lines problem was “really difficult” for forces, which had to balance an obligation to tackle drug dealing and associated violence with addressing the needs of exploited children. “The young people are both victims and offenders,” he said.

Forces are hoping that a new national police co-ordinating centre for county lines, currently being set up, will improve sharing of information and best practice.

Yet the people most heavily involved in tackling the problem insist police action alone will be insufficient — and that harsh tactics like those pursued by the Wiltshire force will be particularly counterproductive.

Trevor Brown, head of Birmingham’s youth offending service, said it was wrong to think the threat of prison would deter the children from becoming couriers.

The youngsters — many of them from deprived backgrounds, and some having suffered child abuse — feared drug gangs would act on threats made against their families if they left the county lines operations, he added.

“There may be a young person and you say ‘You’re going to get punished, go to prison’,” said Mr Brown. “That comes nowhere compared with what they’re facing from some of these gang members.”

Carlene Firmin, an academic at the University of Bedfordshire, said the county lines problem had shown up the shortcomings in the UK’s child protection arrangements, which are mainly concentrated on shielding youngsters from abuse at home. Beyond the home, children’s needs risk being overlooked by the police, local authorities and others.

“We’re challenged by criminal exploitation because it is a kind of child abuse for which the child protection system wasn’t designed,” said Ms Firmin, who is working with London’s Hackney council on a new, more holistic children protection system.

She acknowledged police could not ignore the illegal aspects of children’s behaviour, but said that viewing the county lines as primarily a criminal justice issue only served as a barrier to fully understanding the problem.

“There are all these barriers,” said Ms Firmin. “It becomes harder and harder to see this for what it is — a vulnerable child who has been exploited.”