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

Abstract

This chapter uses an intersectional approach to explore the perspectives of young men based in one English county, who were involved in county lines drug distribution, and who had been identified by the professionals in their lives as potential victims of child criminal exploitation. Drawing on observations and semi-structured interviews, this chapter engages with intersectional scholarship to develop two key themes. Firstly, it conveys young men’s descriptions of their involvement in county lines as shaped by intersecting pressures of economic hardship and their expectations of their familial roles. Secondly, the chapter engages with the ways in which young men’s conceptualizations of their involvement in county lines, specifically, their rejection of the term ‘victim of exploitation’ and identification with the idea of involvement as a ‘constrained choice’, were informed by intersecting experiences of masculinity, socioeconomic marginalization and working-class identity.

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).…”

“…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.…”

“…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).…”

Victim as a relative status

“…For example, Dunn's (2001) work demonstrates the razor-thin line that women affected by stalking must walk, in which almost any action taken or presentation made has the potential to negatively impact their claims to victim status. Marshall (2022) demonstrates this in relation to young people affected by criminal exploitation, highlighting that the constricting behavioural expectations associated with being a 'genuine' victim fail to contain the complex and messy realities of young people's lived experiences, which spill out over the rigid boundaries of victim status. In the context of this research, young people who harmed, or who were perceived to have harmed, others violated stringent normative expectations of victims as passive, helpless and innocent (Christie, 1986;Meyers, 2011;Strobl, 2010;Van Dijk, 2009) and, as a result, experienced the full force of its precarity.…”

“…This is perhaps because young people tended not to foreground either the idea that they were victims, or that they had harmed others. For example, as described in more detail by Marshall (2022), it was common for young people participating in this research to frame their involvement in drug dealing as a survival strategy that helped their families to navigate socio-economic marginalisation. This resonates with Andersson's (2008) study of a young man's narratives of engaging in violence, in which the 'victim-offender dichotomy' is supplanted by a 'hero-villain' narrative, in service of maintaining a positive moral self-presentation that also aligns with the expectations of hegemonic masculinities.…”