County Lines
Victim or Offender?
Victim or offender?
County lines can look like offending from the outside: carrying drugs, holding money, possessing weapons or travelling between areas.
But behind that behaviour can be grooming, debt, threats, violence, coercion and exploitation.
The Home Office describes county lines as a highly violent form of drug supply in which gangs and organised networks may exploit children and vulnerable adults to move or store drugs and money.
Why do young people get involved?
It is not always as simple as somebody deciding to join a gang.
Young people may initially be offered money, clothes, status, protection, friendship or a sense of belonging. Once involved, intimidation, debt and violence can make leaving much harder. Government guidance also warns that exploitation may exist even where the young person appears to have agreed to what they are doing.
That creates one of the hardest questions for the justice system:
How do we hold people accountable for crime while recognising when criminal behaviour is itself the result of exploitation?
Are we identifying victims early enough?
The scale is significant. Home Office estimates indicate that around 15,500 children were identified as at risk of or involved in child criminal exploitation in the year ending March 2025 — and the Government says this is likely to underestimate the true number.
Children are not the only victims. Vulnerable adults can also have their homes taken over — often called cuckooing — or be coerced into storing drugs, money or weapons.
OUR ANSWER
A child involved in county lines may have committed an offence and still be a victim of exploitation.
Those two realities do not always cancel each other out.
The response therefore has to look beyond what happened and ask how the person came to be there, who was controlling them and who ultimately benefited from the crime.
Safeguarding cannot mean ignoring serious offending. But punishment alone will not dismantle exploitation if the people controlling the operation simply replace one vulnerable young person with another.
To tackle county lines effectively, we need to pursue those creating the exploitation while giving those caught inside it a realistic route out.
The figures
15,500
children were estimated to be at risk of or involved in child criminal exploitation in the year ending March 2025.
2,659
children were recorded as involved in county lines activity during 2024/25.
2,083
National Referral Mechanism referrals were flagged as county lines cases during 2025; 76% were male children.
Want to understand more?
Meet Kyle and Reece in our books.
Kyle thinks you’ll like him.
Reece wants you to hear his voice.
Two different stories. Two different perspectives on crime, prison and life after release.
Want to delve deeper?
Explore our County Lines page for more on exploitation, grooming and how county lines operates.
Sources & further reading
Explore our Safer Streets section for evidence, statistics and further information.