Data from Catch22, the charity that provides the national county lines support service, said girls and young women formed 22% of its caseload in 2025. Photograph: AlamyView image in fullscreenData from Catch22, the charity that provides the national county lines support service, said girls and young women formed 22% of its caseload in 2025. Photograph: AlamyRise in number of girls being identified as victims in county lines exploitation, data showsCharities suggest ‘gendered understanding’ of crime means services often fail to recognise girls and young women as victims
An increasing number of girls are being identified as victims of county lines exploitation, figures have shown.
Data from Catch22, the charity that provides the national county lines support service, said girls and young women formed 22% of its caseload in 2025, up from 15% the previous year.
The organisation is supporting the government in an attempted crackdown on the practice, as part of its county lines programme.
The programme, launched in 2019 under the Conservatives and continued under Labour, is aimed at stopping gangs that transport drugs from urban areas to rural locations, often using dedicated phone lines. These gangs frequently force vulnerable young people to move drugs and money across the country.
However, Catch22 said a “gendered understanding” of the problem meant services often fail to recognise girls and young women as victims.
It said while about half of the boys referred to its county lines service received support from the National Referral Mechanism, a government project designed to help victims of modern slavery, this was the case for only about one in six girls.
Marike van Harskamp, the head of policy at Catch22, said: “Part of the problem is that there is a very gendered understanding of criminal exploitation and county lines, that it only concerns boys. It often means girls are not properly identified.
“For girls to become involved in child criminal exploitation and county lines, we know there is a bit more complexity in their experience and that there are overlapping issues going on.
“A key way in which girls become victims of county lines and criminal exploitation is via the so-called boyfriend model. It’s similar to child sexual exploitation – being groomed into what they think is a relationship, then, being forced, without necessarily noticing, into criminal activity – transporting drugs and transporting money in the county lines model.”
The government said police had disbanded record numbers of county lines last year. New data showed that, in 2025, 2,740 county lines were closed, 1,657 gang leaders charged and 961 knives seized. It plans to invest more than £34m in its county lines programme this year.
“The success is reflected in the numbers, but there is a lot more to do,” van Harskamp said. “Our service sees children as young as seven being groomed. That is why it is really important to frame county lines exploitation as a form of child abuse, forcing children to do things they should never be doing. We see that across the genders.”
Van Harskamp said county lines grooming often took place on social media platforms, such as Snapchat, with gangs often targeting those with “additional vulnerabilities”.
“What else is going on in their life that makes them more vulnerable to abuse?” she said. “That can be mental health, that can be substance misuse, that can be because they are care experienced and their arrangements aren’t safe. It can be because they aren’t properly in education, or have unsafe peer relationships.
“The earlier the risk is identified, the better. We are seeing long-term, very significant mental health impact, from the trauma of it. As long as there are mental health issues, it also means they are at higher risk of being stuck in that cycle of exploitation.
“There needs to be specialist mental health aftercare for victims of exploitation … We know there is a relationship between poor mental health and not being in education, training or employment. It has consequences for life chances and social mobility.”
Det Supt Dan Mitchell, head of the national county lines coordination centre, said tackling the problem remained a “top priority” for police forces across the country.
“As county lines gangs’ methods evolve, our policing approach does too,” he said. “We remain committed to pursuing high-harm county lines and those controlled by violent drug dealers, so that we can prevent harm, protect children and vulnerable adults, and disrupt criminal activity.”
