UK. I’ve seen the child slavery of county lines up close. £20m won’t stop it
UK. I’ve seen the child slavery of county lines up close. £20m won’t stop it
A child close to me was entrapped by criminals. Only a national strategy will stem the mafia-style takeover of our towns.
(...) “County lines” refers to the mobile phone numbers used by criminal networks to sell and distribute drugs around the country. The term sounds kind of street and clever. But it’s a sanitisation of what county lines drug gangs really represent: the slavery of our children and young people for the purposes of making vast amounts of money. Child slaves are being recruited in our communities, under our noses, in parks, town centres and outside schools across the country. Criminals actively target communities they deem to be easy targets: those with cut-to-the-bone services, thin policing and a belief that “this sort of thing doesn’t happen here”. (The Guardian, UK, 04.10.2019)