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Child criminal exploitation (CCE) emerges from the complex interplay between potential targets, motivated perpetrators and conducive environments. Drawing on contextual safeguarding and rational choice theory. The purpose of this paper is to explain the relational dynamics that lead to CCE in terms of complex systems.

This paper reviews the existing criminological and public health perspectives on CCE and compare against current assessment protocols used to identify child victims of exploitation.

Findings demonstrate a conceptual and empirical flaw in existing practice. This flaw can be understood in terms of a failure to include both environmental conditions and the perpetrator’s motivation when trying to prevent CCE.

To correct this, this paper develops an original systemic model called circles of analysis. This model builds on contextual safeguarding to overcome this identified flaw by also including perpetrator motivation to develop a Systemic Investigation, Protection and Prosecution Strategy.

It is worth considering as to whether our model can be scaled up to look at trafficking of children and adults for modern slavery, servitude, forced and compulsory labour in different contexts and jurisdictions. Alongside this, is there capacity to build perpetrator behaviours into the contextual safeguarding model?

The potential for further development and alignment with the principles of contextual safeguarding is tantalising, and it is hoped that the contribution to this important special edition will open up new avenues for collaboration with both academics and practitioners who are concerned with protecting children and combatting CCE.

This strategy is uniquely designed to improve how police and social workers identify and investigate CCE and safeguard potential victims and survivors.

This study aims to create a platform for frontline practitioners to share experiences, express opinions and forge new ideas for effective multi-agency work when responding to child exploitation by county line gangs (CLGs).

CLGs are grooming children as young as age 7. The need for effective multi-agency responses to grooming by CLGs is a key priority for prevention. Using findings from focus groups held with 13 youth practitioners, school staff and charities, this article highlights the barriers that multi-agency frontline practitioners face when they are tasked with responding to instances of child criminal exploitation by CLGs.

Discussions within the focus groups indicate there are many common barriers and driving factors with regards to young people being successfully groomed by a CLG. More specifically, findings from this research identified school exclusions and a lack of prosocial sense of belonging to be a driving factor that exacerbated the risk of being successfully groomed by a CLG. Lack of a significant adult relationship was also found to be a barrier to successful multi-agency intervention, which was attributed to the lack of funding and resources required for adequate staffing needed to build meaningful relationships.

This study offered the unique opportunity for practitioners from various different sectors and jurisdictions to share their experiences of not only working with young people involved in CLGs, but also their challenges when using a multi-agency approach. These discussions are particularly important in the case of CLGs due to the cross-jurisdiction nature of the gangs’ activities. This research has identified issues with multi-agency responses to CLGs and offers recommendations for improvement. Identifying and understanding the barriers that practitioners face when responding to CLGs can allow for the development and implementation of various measures, which will aid the safeguarding of vulnerable victims of exploitation by CLGs.

This paper aims to present a mixed methods study of child criminal exploitation (CCE), particularly in the form of “county lines”, in three local authorities in southeast England. The data is analysed using a framework constructed from two relevant contextual and relational theories to understand experiences of CCE and the safeguarding responses undertaken to protect young people from harm.

Data were drawn from a survey (n = 118); interviews (n = 5) and focus groups (n = 15) with professionals; interviews with parents (n = 4); and from secondary analysis of eight interviews with young people affected by criminal exploitation. The analytic framework was applied to the data to answer two research questions: what is the role and significance of young people’s interactions with peers, parents and professionals in their CCE trajectories; and how do professionals understand and address risks within contexts in which young people are exposed to CCE? The mixed methods data collected by the authors were coded and analysed using this framework.

Although professionals were aware of contexts and relational power dynamics, the situated and temporal nature of CCE remained overlooked within safeguarding systems. Professionals required more space, time and support to fully and flexibly engage with young people and their families to increase safety.

There is limited research available that critically examines safeguarding responses to CCE in diverse geographic and cultural contexts. This paper contributes a critical account of how professionals might create connections and opportunities for change with young people, identifying structural constraints within practice systems alongside emerging examples of effective practice.

This paper aims to present an analysis of a “county lines” safeguarding partnership in a large city region of England. A critical analysis of current literature and practice responses to “county lines” is followed by the presentation of an analytical framework that draws on three contextual and social theories of (child) harm. This framework is applied to the partnership work to ask: are the interconnected conditions of criminal exploitation of children via “county lines” understood?; do interventions target the contexts of harm?; and is social and institutional harm acknowledged and addressed?

The analytical framework is applied to a data set collected by the author throughout a two-year study of the “county lines” partnership. Qualitative data collected by the author and quantitative data published by the partnership are coded and thematically analysed in NVivo against the analytic framework.

Critical tensions are surfaced in the praxis of multi-agency, child welfare responses to “county lines” affected young people. Generalising these findings to the child welfare sector at large, it is proposed that the contextual dynamics of child harm via “county lines” must be understood in a broader sense, including how multi-agency child welfare practices contribute to the harm experienced by young people.

There are limited peer-reviewed analyses of child welfare responses to “county lines”. This paper contributes to that limited scholarship, extending the analysis by adopting a critical analytic framework to a regional county lines partnership at the juncture of future national, child welfare responses to “county lines”.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how young people who offend with others define delinquent and criminal groups and consider the social risk factors associated with gang membership and criminal exploitation.

The sample consisted of 15 young people who were purposively sampled from a group of 14- to 17-year-old males who had been identified as at risk of gang involvement and referred to a community-based programme. Using a social identity framework, a thematic analysis was undertaken to investigate how the participants viewed their role in offending as part of a group.

The participants identified peer groups, street gangs and the involvement of adult criminals as distinct categories of offending groups. Unlike prior models for gang involvement, some members of the sample were involved in multiple groups to perform different categories of crime. Importantly, participants displayed an awareness of exploitation and described successful exit strategies from criminal groups.

Understanding how young people who are involved in delinquent behaviour and offending define gang and group offending.

The implications for gang and group offending prevention and intervention programmes are discussed.

The literature on child criminal exploitation and UK drug markets is in its infancy. This paper offers further evidence for the processes of joining and leaving delinquent and criminal groups.

This paper aims to explore the purpose and outline the key features of Liverpool Football Club Foundation’s County Lines (CL) programme and how principles of collaboration and co-production can be implemented to educate children at risk of entering the youth justice system.

This paper reviews the findings from a 12-week CL intervention programme in 14 secondary schools in the Liverpool City Region between 2021 and 2022. The programme was designed in collaboration with funders, partners and participants and aimed to improve knowledge of, and change attitudes towards CL and its associated harms, including knife crime and child exploitation.

Knowledge and attitude changes were measured across 12 indicators, with positive changes recorded for each indicator. Perhaps of most interest to those working in the sector was the recorded success in obtaining consistent attendance from beginning to end with very little erosion of engagement. This suggests that the content and method of delivery was successful in engaging harder to reach young people to make positive change.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first of its kind to examine how collaboration and co-production (two of the five principles of the Serious Violence Strategy 2018) can be implemented by a football charity and its partners to educate children in a local community on the harms of CL.

Purpose – UK laws surrounding the duty to prevent individuals being drawn into terrorism often focus on the need to safeguard the populace from exploitation by terrorist or extremist groups. It is within this context that countering violent extremism (CVE) work often takes place. This chapter explores how this legal duty shapes CVE projects in the UK, drawing on practitioner’s perspectives.

Methods – Writing from the perspective of practitioners from ConnectFutures, an organization that has been operating since 2013 in the UK and internationally, who advocate for a contextual safeguarding approach to provide a more holistic attitude to the prevention of violent extremism and exploitation.

Findings – Exploring the intersections between multiple forms of criminal exploitation, as well as engaging in the spaces and places young people experience harm, allows practitioners working in the CVE space to contribute to the protection of individuals from terrorist and extremist radicalization.

Originality/Value – Applying the new developed contextual safeguarding framework to CVE projects provides a contemporary and alternative ways to conduct CVE work. The chapter provides overviews of three CVE projects running with young people today in the UK, exploring how the new frameworks are adopted within these programs, all designed to address the complex causes of violent extremism.

Individuals who are exploited and manipulated by criminal gangs are often wrongly labelled, stereotyped, and blamed (to varying levels) for the vulnerable positions that they find themselves in. Individuals who perpetrate violence towards others have often also been victims of violence and crime themselves. Teaching about these groups and trying to represent their position and experiences is a difficult and sensitive area. Building on current research, experiences of teaching professionals and students about the exploitation of marginalised groups, serious violence, and crime during COVID-19, are reflected upon. In doing so, what is important for students to understand about marganilised groups is set out, and recommendations for improvements to teaching practice are discussed. Firstly, it is argued that where educators seek to help students learn about marginalised groups, there needs to be preparation to put the work in at the front end and reflect on their own assumptions, beliefs and learning needs. Secondly, they also need to think about the ‘active’ and ‘passive’ (Seddon, 2005) aspects of individual agency and to be as authentic as they can to the lived experiences of marginalised communities as community members engage in types of behaviours and access services. Finally, it is then important for them to open up opportunities for students to reflect on the more detailed aspects and wider social, economic, and structural factors that marginalised communities face as they endeavour to articulate their own needs in society.

The purpose of this paper is to attempt to disseminate street gang research by Hesketh (2018) that has identified young people’s perceptions between employment and criminality in areas of Merseyside becoming blurred. In particular, disenfranchised young males are turning to involvement with drug dealing street gangs as a substitute for employment.

The research involved the use of a hybrid design using an adapted version of Wengraf’s (2001) biographic narrative interpretive method as the means for data collection with Strauss and Corbin’s (1995) grounded theory approach as the means of analysis.

Such is the demand for Class A drugs in night-time economies that street gangs in areas close to such economies are adding a dark business-like dimension for which Hesketh (2018) has termed “Deviant Entrepreneurship”. This can range from selling drugs on behalf of adult organised crime figures (known on the streets of Liverpool as “grafting”) to self-employment as sole trading deviant group enterprises having several “grafts” that recent research by Robinson, McLean and Densley (2018) has noted, has extended into the annals of Criminal Child Exploitation.

Data were derived from a sample of young males, thus, no observations can be made about females involved in gangs.

The research highlights the need for more gang interventions that focus on building opportunities within marginalised areas. It also suggests as Andell (2019) points out a need for a fresh approach to countering gang culture.

The paper concludes by suggesting that Merseyside is only one in many marginalised areas of the UK facing a similar problem as young people involved in street gangs attempt to realise their potential not through legitimate employment means but through dark entrepreneurial techniques learnt from older peers and adult figures.

The findings are taken from a PhD thesis by Robert F. Hesketh University of Chester.

Using a mixed methodology comprising interviews, case file analysis and descriptive statistics, this study aims to examine the experiences of all 43 young people in Wales subject to secure accommodation orders between 1st April 2016 and 31st March 2018.

Children in the UK aged 10–17 years who are deemed to be at a significant level of risk to themselves or others may be subject to a secure accommodation order, leading to time spent in a secure children’s home (SCH) on welfare grounds. Following a rise in the number of children in Wales referred to SCHs for welfare reasons, this paper describes these young people’s journeys into, through and out of SCHs, giving insight into their experiences and highlighting areas for policy and practice improvements.

Findings indicate that improvements in mental health support and placement availability are key in improving the experiences of this particularly vulnerable group of young people throughout their childhood.

Other practical implications of the study’s findings, such as improvements in secure transport arrangements, are also discussed.

While the findings are limited by the reliance on self-report methods and the size of the study, namely, the small number of young people with experience of SCHs who were able to participate, the findings build on the existing knowledge base around children’s residential accommodation and provide new insights into how best to support these children.