COVID-19 and Child Criminal Exploitation: Closing Urgent Knowledge and Data Gaps on the Implications of Pandemic for County Lines.

自2015年《现代奴隶法》出台以来，提交国家犯罪局国家转介机制的现代奴隶制潜在受害者人数一直在上升。这一增长的一个重要因素是剥削儿童犯罪的出现和突出，其典型特征是“县线”贩运，贩毒团伙利用经过修饰的儿童和“布谷鸟”财产在农村城镇和村庄的较大城市地区出口和销售毒品。19型冠状病毒，特别是旨在减缓感染率的社会距离措施，将影响非法活动和对其的反应。大流行的影响需要在检测、执行、预防和保障领域采取紧急应对措施。通过与来自警方、非政府组织和其他法定部门的主要前线多部门利益攸关方进行面谈，并分析适当的数据，我们将确定犯罪商业模式和运作方式的任何变化，以及随后对保护措施的影响，并提出缓解措施和其他补救措施的建议。我们将调查刑事实践的变化是否将被证明更有利可图和/或更低风险，从而促进犯罪行为的长期重构，这些行为更难被发现，对未来外部冲击的影响更具弹性，例如新冠肺炎造成的冲击。

The number of potential victims of modern slavery referred to the National Crime Agency's National Referral Mechanism has risen consistently since the introduction of the Modern Slavery Act 2015. A significant contributor to this rise is the emergence and prominence of Child Criminal Exploitation, typified by 'county lines' trafficking, where narcotics gangs use groomed children and 'cuckooed' properties to export and sell drugs from larger metropolitan areas in rural towns and villages.COVID-19, specifically the social distancing measures designed to slow rates of infection, will affect both the illegal activity and the responses to it. The pandemic's impacts require an urgent response in the areas of detection, enforcement, prevention and safeguarding. By interviewing key frontline multisectoral stakeholders from police, NGOs and others in the statutory sector, and analysing appropriate data, we will identify any changes to criminal business models and modus operandi, and subsequent impacts on safeguarding, offering recommendations for mitigation and other remedial interventions. We will investigate whether changes to criminal practice will prove more profitable and/or lower risk, thus facilitating a long-term reconstitution of criminal behaviour that is more difficult to detect and more resilient to the effects of future exogenous shocks such as the one caused by COVID-19.