Exclusive: police chief says problem is at a high for modern era amid lack of youth facilities

This article is more than 8 months old

This article is more than 8 months old

The criminal exploitation of children is at its highest level in modern times as gangs capitalise on a lack of youth facilities and school exclusions to groom children, a police chief has revealed.

Chief constable Shaun Sawyer said that as state provision for children receded in the last decade, driven in part by austerity, criminals had exploited the space between “the school gate and the front door”.

Sawyer is the national police lead for modern slavery and human trafficking and he said exploited children were “almost back to Victorian times”, and called for a gender bias against seeing boys as victims of criminal exploitation to end.

He said more police officers promised by Boris Johnson’s government was welcome but more needed to be done to look after and protect children. “We are seeing more exploitation than before in modern times. They are UK nationals. More police officers will make a dent, but it won’t stop the causes,” he said.

“One of the solutions to the causes is the gap between the dysfunctional home and the school.”

Sawyer said most of those youngsters subjected to modern slavery and human trafficking were British nationals, up 73.7% on the previous year, at about 726 people.

He said that while in previous years, sexual exploitation or labour exploitation were the biggest reasons to class someone as a modern slave, it was now criminal exploitation driven by drug gangs, and including the county lines model of distributing and selling illegal narcotics.

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Under county lines youngsters are groomed by urban gangs operating phone lines for customers to buy drugs, and travel to take supplies up and down the country, and deal them.

According to police figures, in one three-month period 638 children under 18 claimed to be criminally exploited and the majority was because of county lines, Sawyer said. That was 94.5% higher than the previous year.

The number of adults claiming criminal exploitation in one three-month period this year was 376, up 142% on the previous year.

For adults and children there are 1,739 live modern slavery operations. In January 2016 the figure was just 180 operations.

Some of this is due to improved reporting, while some is because of increased exploitation.

Sawyer said: “For these children they are almost back to Victorian times and are being criminally exploited. These kids are looking for family and security. This is the vacuum of youth diversion schemes.

“For understandable reasons of austerity, state youth services have been vacated. This gap of youth provision between the school and family is the void that the exploiters are filling.”

Sawyer, the chief constable of the Devon and Cornwall force, said criminals wishing to groom and exploit children portrayed themselves as charismatic, aspirational, and could seem powerful: “We’ve seen our schools in Devon and Cornwall work so hard, but more can be done.”

“If you exclude a kid you are immediately putting them in this space. The state has walked away, where do you expect them to go? The exploiters go thank you very much, that kid is mine.”

“Youth diversion services need to be hard wired in. Child criminal exploitation, it’s all about family, creating feelings of security, self-worth and power. This gap between the school gate and the front door is where the exploiters are attractive to youngsters.”

Sawyer said attitudes to young boys being exploited needed to change. Girls being sexually exploited will be seen as victims, he said, but it is less likely the authorities will see boys pressed into working for drugs gangs as victims and not criminals.

Sawyer said: “We accept that a 14-year-old girl does not make a choice to sleep with multiple men. I don’t think it is an informed choice to choose repeatedly to steal or deal drugs, and then hand over the profits.

“We’ve learned that girls who are exploited can be victims, but we seem unable or unwilling to learn the same lessons for boys where criminal exploitation is concerned.”

In one case youngsters from north London were dumped in the flat of a 56-year-old addict in Bodmin, Cornwall, which they used to sell heroin and crack cocaine that had been driven into the county in hired cars.

In September 2019 seven gang members were convicted of running a county lines operation which exploited vulnerable young people to sell drugs. The “Billy line” sold class A drugs to almost 100 users in Cornish towns.

One of the exploited boys, 16, told police he had incurred a drug debt of £55 with the gang and was told he could pay it off by dealing. He presumed he would be put to work near his home in north London but ended up 250 miles away in Bodmin, far from family, friends and familiar surroundings.

The gang was so violent that when police raided addresses in London and Cornwall, one gang member threatened officers with a machete before being overpowered and arrested.