They Didn’t Just “Go Off the Rails”
When a teenager or very young adult appears in court accused of supplying drugs, we tend to meet them at the end of the story.
Nineteen years old. Drugs. Supply. Court.
“Another youngster who went off the rails.”
But where did the rails actually change direction?
A child can still be sitting in a classroom at 16. At 18 they’re legally an adult. By 19, some young people are already deeply involved in drugs, debt, supply and criminality.
What happened in between?
Grooming is Grooming Wherever it Plays Out
We tend to associate grooming with sexual exploitation. Yet grooming is a method, not simply one particular type of abuse.
The desired outcome might be sexual access, money, drugs, fraud, obedience or criminal activity.
The mechanics can be remarkably similar.
Find the vulnerability.
Build trust.
Create belonging.
Offer something the person needs or wants.
Start with something small.
“Hold this.”
“Take that round there.”
“Let me use your account.”
“Drop this off.”
Reward compliance.
Normalise what is happening.
Increase the demands.
Create dependency.
Then come the consequences for saying no.
Debt. Threats. Violence. Fear. Isolation.
By that stage, the person may be sufficiently compromised, controlled or frightened that simply walking away isn’t nearly as easy as it looks from the outside.
That is a coercive control pathway.
The Safeguarding Cliff Edge
This is where we need to ask some uncomfortable questions.
What happens to safeguarding as that child gets older?
At 16 or 17, a young person carrying drugs for somebody else may be recognised as a child being criminally exploited.
Then comes their eighteenth birthday.
They haven’t suddenly gained another decade of life experience overnight. The people controlling them haven’t disappeared. Their debts haven’t disappeared. Their vulnerabilities haven’t disappeared.
But the lens through which the system sees them can change dramatically.
The vulnerable child can very quickly become the adult suspect.
Possession.
Supply.
Arrest.
Prosecution.
Conviction.
Adult safeguarding can still apply after 18, depending upon the person’s circumstances and applicable safeguarding framework. The important point is that exploitation doesn’t conveniently stop because childhood legally has.
So where is safeguarding during that transition?
Who asks whether the 19-year-old defendant was recruited at 15, 16 or 17?
Who follows that pathway backwards?
The Recruited Become the Recruiters
Then the cycle becomes even more complicated.
The person recruiting a vulnerable teenager may once have been that vulnerable teenager themselves.
They learn the system.
They become trusted.
They move upwards.
Eventually they recruit somebody beneath them.
The recruited becomes the recruiter and another vulnerable young person takes their place.
Gender doesn’t discriminate here either. Boys and girls, men and women can be recruited, controlled, exploited and eventually become recruiters themselves.
The hierarchy simply needs people.
Small Fish, Smaller Fish
Drug networks can require people at many different levels.
Someone transports the drugs.
Someone stores them.
Someone sells them.
Someone collects the money.
Someone provides an address.
Someone posts the package.
Someone recruits the next person.
Some get caught.
Some go to prison.
There they may meet people with considerably greater criminal experience and connections.
Some become institutionalised, eventually returning to precisely the environment from which they came.
Meanwhile, those sitting further up the chain recruit another foot soldier.
And another.
The people at the bottom can become remarkably replaceable.
Getting Your Man Isn’t Necessarily Getting the Problem
Of course police should investigate drug offences. Drugs cause enormous harm and those committing offences must be held accountable.
But an arrest cannot automatically be treated as the end of the investigation.
If a young dealer is convicted, there should still be questions.
Who supplied the supplier?
Who introduced them?
Who controlled the money?
Who made the greater profit?
Were debts involved?
Were threats involved?
Who sits above them?
Who are they recruiting beneath them?
How old were they when this actually started?
Those questions don’t excuse criminal behaviour.
They investigate it properly.
Because somebody can be both an offender and a person who has been exploited.
Follow the Pathway, Not Just the Parcel
This is the difference between investigating an event and investigating a pattern.
The event might be straightforward:
Young person found with drugs.
Package intercepted.
Money discovered.
Arrest made.
Charge brought.
Job done?
Not necessarily.
Zoom out and the picture may be considerably larger.
If safeguarding stops where criminalisation begins, we risk prosecuting the product of grooming while never reaching the people who engineered it.
A conviction may remove one person from the chain.
It doesn’t necessarily break the chain.
We categorise abuse by what the perpetrator ultimately wants. Perhaps we should spend much more time recognising the methods used to get there.
Because grooming is grooming wherever it plays out.
And perhaps some young people don’t simply “go off the rails”.
Perhaps somebody has been quietly laying a different track for them for years.
The question for safeguarding, policing and criminal justice shouldn’t simply be:
“Did we get our man or woman?”
It should also be: