A simple sound, a sound that that holds no meaning, a sound that can be no more than a nuisance to a stranger. For the young person holding that phone it can mean the start or end of a unescapable journey.
A county line is a multi-million pound business model that requires logistical planning on a national scale. To understand the risks, it poses to the children, young people and vulnerable adults we need to understand how a county line works. A county line refers to the phone line used to coordinate the movement of illegal products across the country, namely drugs. Various vulnerable groups are exploited to effectively run a county line from children and young people transporting drugs across the country to vulnerable adults whose homes are taken over by gangs as a base to deal drugs from. Social media is the base for coordination of movement and delivery, using Snapchat in particular to instruct individuals of pick-ups or drop offs. The attraction to Snapchat is the belief that messages pop up and disappear without trace. In reality, and with the cooperation of the social media company, messages can be recovered.
It’s a misconception that Grooming and exploitation has a different meaning or different tactics for a county line organised gang than it does for anything else. Let’s clear this up now. Exploitation is exploitation, you can attach any shiny new heading over it, but at the end of the day child criminal exploitation, child sexual exploitation is exploitation! The methods and tactics of recruitment are the more or less the same.
So, what techniques will be used to recruit someone into working for a county line. Well, there is no definitive answer, and no one set technique. There are known models used to exploit young people and children, however these will be dependent on the individual young person and their needs, as will the timescales in which a young person is recruited. It is known that vulnerable young people are more likely to be exploited. However no young person is exempt from being a victim of exploitation. Exploiters will offer a sense of security, a belonging to their gang, social stature, and money. All of which are very appealing to a teenage brain driven by excitement and limited ability to assess risk, unable to picture themselves as a victim, but rather someone who is part of something, earning good money and in a position to work their way up to be an elder.
We need to see what life looks like for young people, see the world their growing up through their eyes. The pressure placed on the shoulders of young people growing up in a world of status and ego, can have frightening results.
A MOBILE PHONE holds open the door ajar for any vulnerable person to peak into a world of high risk and violence. Online gaming, social media, chat rooms can insert themselves into a young person’s life to create fear and sadness. It also prevents any respite from the constant communication from those looking to exploit.
Why does someone get groomed? Let’s ask that question. What makes one person more vulnerable than another to exploitation. It can be different extremes, somebody isolated without positive role models that longs to be part of something, to a child or young adult that believes a county line will bring status and wealth instantly. The common thread in both sides is inclusion, being part of something, something that requires a action that only they can deliver, thus belonging and need being filled. This creates that loyalty and admiration to their exploiter, ‘they need me’ ‘only I can do it’, once the exploiter has loyalty, then they build fear into the relationship, fear of failure and fear of consequences from failing.
Now the exploited are caught in a cycle of expectation and fear to deliver. This constant feeling of fear can result in bigger risks and bigger punishments. We will never understand what this feels like. It will be the centre of their world and everything else will start to slip away.
Understanding the currency that is used to entice the young and vulnerable paramount to spotting the signs for parents that possible Grooming is taking place. New trainers, mobile phones, clothes and new consoles could be used to create that pressured loyalty, these items suddenly appearing could be an indicator of exploitation.
This currency creates pressures and also creates a ‘hidden debt’; a hidden debt is a debt that is placed on an individual without their knowledge but expected to payback the gift. The gift giving creates that loyalty bond which then leads to pressure to move drugs across the country, this is the beginning of debt bandage.
What is a concern is the value that an exploited person will put on their own life when working for a county line. Majority do not expect to see 19 years of age, this is because they understand the odds of likely receiving punishment for failure, payback from a rival postcode or lengthy prison sentence. But the relationship is already in place with their exploiter, and the fear and loyalty increases a bond with other exploited children within the same county line. This togetherness is the strongest and positive bond they have in their life, the chance of returning to a broken home, a school or a Saturday job earning minimum wage will be close to zero. So professional agencies need to be proactive, and adapt their services to the need of exploited children and young adults, having a cut-off age of 18, so all professionals that have built that rapport and started work must stop those interventions immediately after their 18th birthday. This will immediately create that sense of abandonment again, the same feeling they had that made them a target to exploitation. This is the cycle that will repeat unless we adapt to the need of our young people.
Johnny Bolderson
Senior Service Manager County Lines Support & Rescue Service, Catch22
