Young people reveal how adult criminals exploit children to commit crime in Scotland
A new Scotland-wide campaign was launched yesterday warning that adult criminals are grooming and exploiting children to commit crime, enabling them to profit while leaving children to face the risks and consequences.
The campaign, created by Fearless – the youth service of the independent charity Crimestoppers – is shaped by young people with lived experience of crime, exploitation and the justice system. It challenges adults across Scotland to look beyond behaviour and recognise the criminal exploitation of children for what it is: child abuse.
Launching at the Grosvenor Picture Theatre in Glasgow, the campaign includes new films and social media content for young people, parents, carers and professionals, and has been developed with support from Scottish Government, Police Scotland’s Retail Crime Taskforce and the Scottish Violence Reduction Unit.
Young people told Fearless that exploitation does not always feel like exploitation from the inside. Adults can use trust, friendship, money, status and protection to draw children into criminal activity, particularly when the child feels other options are limited.
But one young person reflected: “You’re not getting paid to carry or sell the drugs. You’re getting paid to take the risk.”
That insight sits at the heart of the new campaign.
The campaign asks children to look more closely at what is really being offered to them. Criminal exploitation often sees adults profiting, while transferring the greatest risks onto children. The arrest, the violence, the debt, the injury, the criminal record and the consequences are carried by the child, while those directing the activity remain further removed from harm.
Over several months, Fearless listened to young people speak openly about criminal exploitation and the realities they see around them. They talked about violence, arrest, drugs, debt, weapons and being deprived of their liberty. They also spoke about what criminal exploitation appeared to offer and why it could feel difficult to walk away from.
The conversations revealed something many adults struggle to understand. Many young people already know the terrible risks they face. What they challenged Fearless to understand is that awareness of risk is not always enough to help them when the alternative feels like being left with nothing.
The campaign also challenges adults to hold two truths at once.
Some children who are victims of criminal exploitation cause harm – sometimes serious harm. But children can cause harm while also being harmed themselves. It’s not about excusing behaviour – it’s about understanding that there can be a wide range of reasons for offending behaviour, including exploitation.
Fearless is urging adults not to stop at what they can see:
- To stay curious
- To consider who is actually benefiting
- And to ask what might be happening behind the behaviour
The campaign also explores why children do not always feel able to leave these situations.
While fear, threats and violence can be part of criminal exploitation, young people told Fearless that leaving is often about more than what they are escaping. Sometimes it is about what they fear being left without.
As one young person explained: “People don’t leave because there’s nothing there for them. What would they be left with?”
If criminal exploitation appears to offer opportunity, belonging, protection or hope, then safer alternatives must feel real enough to compete.
The campaign argues that it is not enough to tell children what to walk away from – communities, services and trusted adults must also give them something worth walking towards.
Children need more than a route away from harm. They need genuine opportunities, meaningful connections, hope for the future and a sense that they matter.
Lyndsay McDade, Fearless Scotland Manager, said: “I am so grateful to the young people who helped develop this campaign. I asked them to be honest with me, and they were. Never have I been more struck by the level of hopelessness some young people are living with, and yet by their determination to help us understand their reality and get this campaign right.
“Young people, children the same age as my own, shared stories that no child should have to live through. What struck me most was the compassion they showed when talking about other children who were being exploited. They could see the circumstances, pressures and lack of choices facing others, yet they rarely afforded themselves the same understanding.
“Many do not recognise that they are being exploited because what they are experiencing feels normal to them. They often see it as simply the choices they have to make to get by. But those choices are frequently being made in a landscape of limited and harmful alternatives, where what feels like survival comes at a terrible cost and where an adult is manipulating a child’s circumstances for their own gain.
“The people exploiting children should never be offering them what can feel like the strongest sense of opportunity, belonging or hope in their lives. Yet for some children, I fear that is the reality.
“Every child deserves a future bigger than the one their exploiters have planned for them. No child should be written off as too difficult, too risky or too far gone.
“If you know who is exploiting young people, you can speak up 100% anonymously to our charity. At fearless.org, we cannot track your IP address or any contact details that could identify you.”
Children and Young People Minister Siobhian Brown said: “The criminal exploitation of children and young people is an abhorrent crime. Those who are exploited must be recognised as victims of child abuse and given the protection and support they need.
“I am pleased that the Scottish Government, Police Scotland and Fearless are jointly funding this important campaign, whose powerful messages have been shaped by the voices and experiences of young people themselves.
“The Scottish Government is working to protect children and young people from this type of harm. Our Trafficking and Exploitation Strategy Delivery Plan includes action to reduce the criminalisation of exploited children and implement new child criminal exploitation and cuckooing offences in the Crime and Policing Act 2026.
“We’re also developing Scotland’s approach to contextual safeguarding to protect children and young people from harms posed to them from outside their homes.”
Assistant Chief Constable Catriona Paton said: “Every child deserves to be safe from harm and exploitation. This campaign is seeking to protect children from manipulation and exploitation by criminals involved in drug dealing, shoplifting and other crime, often leaving them to face the risks and consequences alone.
“Listening to the experiences of young people is vital if we are to understand the pressures and vulnerabilities that can place them at risk. I thank Fearless for amplifying those voices and providing a safe space for children to connect and communicate.
“Police Scotland is committed to working with partners to safeguard children, support those affected by exploitation, and ensure those responsible are identified and held accountable.”
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