British public opinion condemns child labour in countries such as Pakistan or Bangladesh, but when 12-year-olds in London cycle around the streets delivering wraps on behalf of the local drug dealer, we condemn the ‘feral youths’ – while failing to effectively act against the adult drug dealers who employ them. Rather than condemning children, I consider them to be victims.
Young people join the gang in a search for a surrogate family, but find a bonding similar to the experience of soldiers who have seen action together and survived. If we compare this surrogate family to a traditional family, the first thing that occurs to me is that this family is dysfunctional. If a father figure is sending the children out to do deliveries of his class A drugs, in a traditional family, then social services would not think twice about going in and taking the child out of this situation.
It gets worse. This family has parents who commit murder, as a part of that drugs business. The children are used to transport the gun to the scene, in order to protect the murdering parent. After the killing, the child removes the gun from the scene. If stopped by the police, the child would say he found it. Since he has no criminal record, the existing criminal law would have little chance of proving otherwise. This is the day-to-day doings of the drug gang.
It gets even worse than this. Unlike child labourers in Pakistan, in London, the children are often not even paid. They work out of pure admiration of the adult male. Like child-soldiers in Africa, they are respected for being compliant and cheap. While the political rhetoric condemns those who employ child soldiers in Africa, here in London, the political anger is toward the children themselves.
What we need is a policy to control the practices of drug dealers. We cannot battle the drugs business out of existence. The war on drugs can never do more than contain the drugs industry. I propose that within that containment we seek to eliminate child gang involvement by prosecuting their ‘employers’ and through creating a child-labour taboo to damage the reputation of those dealers who fail to comply. This should be backed up by aggressive use of social services, willing to remove a child where necessary.
To understand how best to apply this taboo, one must understand the reputation of the dealer. Name-and-shame strategies have always been counterproductive, since the strategy presumes that career criminals care about their good character in the same way as we do. They don’t. Their reputation needs to be a violent reputation. They have developed their reputation over many years, so to seek to damage the reputation of an established drug dealer by naming an shaming is more likely to do him a favour by advertising his notoriety as well promoting his corporate brand.
However, there is damage to reputation that criminals have a disproportionate fear of. The use of children in the distribution of drugs is in my opinion a matter of child abuse. I suggest we legislate for a child abuse register and put the dealers on it, if they are shown to be users of child labour. I imagine this register would primarily act as a disincentive to the dealers, in order to discourage them from using children in their business. I also imagine the register being an opportunity for court-order powers, rather like the ASBO. For example, a clause might read, ‘Not to communicate with any person under the age of 18’. I also imagine that the police would have greater powers of stop and search against those on the register and the properties they frequent.