Baroness: My fears for teen 'ghost pupils' running drug gangs

CHILDREN as young as 13 are running violent county lines drug gangs across Britain as school exclusions and vanishing "ghost pupils" fuel an explosion in exploitation, an expert has warned.

- By Lucy Johnston SOCIAL AFFAIRS EDITOR

Former children's commissioner for England Anne Longfield said youngsters barely into their teens were heading drug networks, controlling supply lines of up to 80 miles, ordering retribution acts and brandishing machetes.

Baroness Longfield said: "We are now seeing 13 and 14-year-olds at the top of these operations.

"They're running drug lines across counties, handing out punishments, using threats, and operating like a business a very ruthless one."

The peer warned the scale of the crisis is now so severe "there isn't a town or city in England untouched by this". In some areas, police and social workers say the criminal model has flipped, with children becoming the kingpins while older gang leaders operate behind the scenes.

The number of children referred for criminal exploitation has soared by 50% in just two years, rising from 10,140 to 15,700.

Many children caught in county lines are never officially flagged. Some are frightened into silence and others have slipped through the cracks of a school system in crisis, including tens of thousands of "ghost children" who stopped attending school during Covid and never returned.

Recent figures show school exclusions have rocketed, leaving thousands of vulnerable children exposed to grooming and gang recruitment.