Transitions

Child criminal exploitation is a serious and growing concern. Children are often subjected to violence and coercion, and drawn into contact with the criminal justice system, with lifelong consequences. The harms do not stop at 18: as children grow up and become young adults entrenched in exploitative environments, their victimisation continues. In the eyes of the criminal justice system, however, these young people may now be seen as perpetrators, rather than victims, and at worst as exploiters, rather than exploited.

In recent years knowledge and understanding of child criminal exploitation has increased. As awareness has grown of how children’s offending behaviour may be a consequence of their victimisation, there have been promising examples of policy and practice focussed on safeguarding children and diverting them away from the criminal justice system. While this progress in recognising the issues impacting children and working to improve the response is warmly welcome, there is still a long way to go, and the same progress has not yet been made
for victims of child criminal exploitation who turn 18 and become young adults.

Safeguarding vs criminal justice

The response to criminal exploitation sits uncomfortably between safeguarding and criminal justice systems. Although victims should be protected and supported, both children and young adults harmed by criminal exploitation often continue to be further harmed by facing a severe criminal justice response. This risk of criminalisation is influenced by race, class and gender-based biases. In particular, it increases with age: the older a child is, the less likely they are to be viewed and treated as a victim, with a significant shift in this perception and treatment at age 18.

Young people do not overnight transform from children into fully mature adults, and the adults exploiting children do not disappear on the eve of their 18th birthday. Yet many of the services and systems designed to protect young people from harm fall away at this point, leaving young adults not only at continued risk of harm, but at risk of increasingly severe criminal justice consequences. Upon legally becoming an adult at 18, thresholds for support are higher, criteria for being protected from prosecution are stricter, sentences are harsher, and young adults are at risk of being charged with the exploitation of children despite their own continued victimisation.

Key findings

The report sets out a number of key findings:

• Upon turning 18, young adults are no longer viewed and treated as vulnerable, failing to reflect the complex reality of exploitation.
• At 18, protections diminish, criteria for being treated as a victim tighten, perceptions of culpability shift, and the risk of being criminalised increases.
• Opportunities to safeguard are missed due to low professional awareness, siloed policy and services, harmful victim–perpetrator binaries, and weak information sharing.
• Harmful perceptions of who is and isn’t a victim may be influenced by race, gender, class, neurodivergence, and care experience.
• Without Transitional Safeguarding and support, there is further risk of criminalising these groups, entrenching already existing inequalities and disparities in the justice system.

Recommendations

It then goes to make a number of recommendations:

• Extend safeguarding up to 25 with a distinct, developmentally appropriate, trauma-informed approach for criminally exploited young adults.
• A cross-government taskforce and concordat on criminal exploitation, to tackle policy silos and ensure multi-agency working.
• Sustainable voluntary sector support to provide trusted, long-term relationships into adulthood.
• Review the National Referral Mechanism and Section 45 of the Modern Slavery Act to strengthen their ability to support criminally exploited young adults.
• Ensure police and CPS focus on those who exploit and put safeguarding first for children and young adults.
• Ensuring prosecutors properly apply the CPS public interest test and adopting a presumption in favour of diversion from the criminal justice system.
• The new offence of child criminal exploitation created under the Crime and Policing Bill must be accompanied by statutory guidance and training that addresses the risk of criminalising exploited young adults and promotes a safeguarding-led response.

Thanks to Evgeniy Beloshytskiy for kind permission to use the header image in this post which was previously published on Unsplash.