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.” She added that girls are often groomed via the “boyfriend model”, similar to child sexual exploitation, where they are forced into criminal activity without necessarily noticing.
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.
Van Harskamp stressed the need for early identification and specialist mental health aftercare, noting that children as young as seven are being groomed. 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.
