Young Men’s Perspectives on Child Criminal Exploitation and Their Involvement in County Lines Drug Dealing: An Intersectional Analysis

Victims first? Examining the place of ‘child criminal exploitation’ within ‘child first’ youth justice

“…Current media and policy representations of CCE fail to acknowledge involvement in exploitative work as a response to unmet need, demonstrating further conflict with the 'child first' approach. Furthermore, while young people identified as 'CCE victims' often reject this label as a description of their experiences, this rejection has often been dismissed on the basis that young people lack the insight and capacity to understand their own experiences (Marshall, 2022). This dismissal of young people's perspectives conflicts with the 'child first' approach's conceptualisation of children as 'experts in their own worlds', and its focus on legitimacy and on working collaboratively with children (Case & Haines, 2015: 169-170).…”

“…Victimhood, as it is normatively conceptualised, is a particularly 'cramped identity' (Minow, 1993(Minow, : 1432 reducing and restricting its inhabitants to a narrow set of traits-most frequently vulnerability, passivity, blamelessness and 'respectability' (Christie, 1986;Duggan, 2018)-and experiences: typically those of total suffering and pain (Van Dijk, 2009). Normative ideas of what it means to be a victim of exploitation understandably often fail to capture the complex and multifaceted lived realities of young people affected by CCE (Marshall, 2022). As a result, young people often find themselves unable to conform to normative expectations associated with victimhood, are perceived as 'rejecting' victim status, and are then reified as offenders (Marshall, 2022).…”

“…Normative ideas of what it means to be a victim of exploitation understandably often fail to capture the complex and multifaceted lived realities of young people affected by CCE (Marshall, 2022). As a result, young people often find themselves unable to conform to normative expectations associated with victimhood, are perceived as 'rejecting' victim status, and are then reified as offenders (Marshall, 2022). In this way, the CCE framing also fails reverse the 'offenderisation' of children and thereby conflicts with the 'child first' approach.…”