Children: Criminal Exploitation

Lord Paddick Excerpts

Tuesday 9th July 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Paddick (LD)]

My Lords, the criminal justice system acknowledges that women subject to coercive control who attack their abusive partners may be the victims of crime rather than perpetrators. What are the Government doing to encourage all the agencies in the criminal justice system to acknowledge that vulnerable young people who commit criminal acts under the coercive control of criminal gangs may also be victims rather than perpetrators?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

The noble Lord and I have discussed this at length, and I do not disagree that someone who is caught up in county lines activity or similar types of activity is both a victim and perhaps a perpetrator through the coercion of a third party. He will know that the knife crime prevention orders—I know he disagreed with them—were introduced in an attempt not to criminalise children but to divert them out of the activity in which they had become involved or into which they had been coerced.