When Girls ‘Go Country’: Criminal exploitation of younger women and girls

By Dr Shona Morrison of The Open University) and Daryl Baguley of the Diane Modahl Sporting Foundation.

Welcome to the fourth blog in our month-long series in celebration of International Women’s Day.  Today’s blog seeks to highlight a lesser-known form of violence against young women and girls – exploitation of vulnerable girls in the context of drug dealing and organised crime groups, known in the UK as ‘County Lines’ drug dealing.

The emergence of ‘County Lines’

In the past decade, infamous cases of Child Sexual Exploitation (CSE) and grooming in areas like Rotherham, Rochdale, and Oxford, highlighted the range of environments outside of the home which can lead to younger females falling victim to groups of (mainly older) men.  Now a new threat is emerging.  There is growing evidence of young women and girls being exploited through ‘County Lines’ drug dealing leading to the risk of physical and sexual violence.  The County Lines model involves organised crime gangs based mainly in cities grooming children and other vulnerable people to carry out activities in support of their drug dealing operations.  Young people are encouraged to travel to provincial coastal, or rural, areas to deliver and sell drugs, often staying in so-called ’safe-houses’, posing considerable risk to their immediate and long-term physical and mental health.

Until recently, the focus on exploitation through County Lines has been mainly on young men and boys, however, there is growing evidence that girls are being increasingly targeted and subjected to additional forms of harm.

The role of girls in gangs and County Lines

The role of females in criminal activity which is traditionally seen as the preserve of males has been largely under-researched.  Research on young women and girls is in even shorter supply.  Although there is some research on girls’ involvement in street gangs, for instance, the literature remains dominated by research on young males.  In the context of County Lines, early research did identity exploitation of females on the periphery of the industry.  For instance, there were cases of young girls forced to attend parties in safe houses where they were expected to provide sexual rewards to young male ‘runners’.  Video footage taken at these events may then be used to blackmail and further intimidate the young females into silence.

However, more recent research implies that young females are beginning to replace males as the ‘foot soldiers’ of County Lines.  The relative ‘invisibility’ of girls and young women allows them the travel largely unnoticed on rail networks across the country, making them ideal targets for drug dealing gangs.  Some researchers compare the grooming of young girls into county lines drug dealing, and the strategies subsequently used to maintain control over them, as akin to ‘coercive control’ – a phrase more commonly found in the domestic abuse literature to describe a pattern of behaviour where someone exerts power over their partner through fear and control.

The 2018 publication of the Government’s Serious Violence Strategy (Home Office – Serious Violence Strategy, April 2018 (publishing.service.gov.uk) marked the beginning of efforts to intervene in the harm caused by County Lines, although it was recognised at that time that most of the violence was by males against males.  Programmes aimed at young females at risk of county lines have been a lower priority and, subsequently, slower to develop.  Preventing this form of abuse against girls must become a higher priority within education and other sectors before girls ‘going country’ becomes the latest exploitation scandal of the 21st Century.

 

We Move – A mentoring project for young people at risk of violence and child criminal exploitation

Dr Shona Morrison from The Open University is conducting an evaluation of a mentoring programme aimed at young males and females considered to be at risk of violence or exploitation by organised crime groups.  The programme, named ‘WeMove’, is funded by Greater Manchester Police and delivered by two organisations in the Greater Manchester area.  Daryl Baguley is one of the programme coordinators delivering WeMove, through the Diane Modahl Sporting Foundation (DMSF) (Home – dmsf.org.uk).  DMSF work with young people across areas of deprivation, empowering them to fulfil their potential.

Daryl has implemented a unique approach to supporting girls referred to WeMove to reduce their vulnerability to criminal exploitation.  Due to the number of mentoring referrals received through one school, Daryl and her team set up a ‘girls group’ which comes together once a week to talk and learn important life skills which empower them to have the confidence to say ‘no’.  Daryl is convinced of the importance of gender-specific approaches to dealing with youth violence.  Girls, she says, need a ‘safe space’ to talk and seek advice about issues of importance to them: “The stories that come from the girls can be frightening. They would share stories about being used by their boyfriends to transport items for them because they know they are less likely to get stopped, not recognising any of the dangers this carries for themselves or the manipulation which had been used over them.”  Daryl believes their issues often come down to lack of knowledge about healthy relationships, low self-esteem and confidence.  She says, “It is clear the girls do not always understand consent and didn’t recognise the signs of coercive and controlling behaviour, leaving them in danger of criminal exploitation, sexual exploitation and trauma”.

With both mentoring and financial support from WeMove, the girls decide on suitable topics and activities for the group.  So far, they have requested sessions on body positivity, Andrew Tate, racism, social media awareness, positive relationships, consent, gang awareness and bullying.  Some have also chosen to undertake First Aid or beauty industry qualifications, while others are themselves working towards gaining peer mentoring qualifications.  Daryl highlights the reciprocal nature of the girls group saying “The conversations we have with the girls are invaluable.  The girls give us a real insight into the challenges and barriers our girls are facing daily.  We have seen an improvement in school attendance and drop in after-school detentions.  The feedback we have had from parents and the school has been extremely positive.  Girls have also left abusive relationships and have started to realise their own worth.  The transformations have been amazing to see.”

For further information about the WeMove programme, or the Open University’s Evaluation of programme, please contact Dr Shona Morrison or Daryl-Anne Baguley

The Motherhood Penalty: Evidence of maternal bias in the workplace and why policing needs to do more.  

by Kendal Wright and Dr Keely Duddin, Policing Organisation and Practice, The Open University

photo by https://pregnantthenscrewed.com/

“Before Breaking The Glass Ceiling, Women Must Climb The Maternal Wall” 

Mary Ferrante

Welcome to the third blog in this special series celebrating International Women’s Day.  Todays post shares an insight into a ground-breaking study exploring women’s experiences of motherhood in the police.

Last summer our research team pressed the ‘go live’ button on our pregnancy and maternity experiences survey, what happened next took us beyond our expectations. Within a two-month period we had almost 6000 responses, and over 9000 free text responses.  We believe this survey to be largest piece of research to have ever been conducted on this topic in policing, and in the public sector in the UK.

As we watched the responses continue to grow, it hit home how important this research is to so many people and how much progress we still need to make. It was a humbling experience to see the time and effort participants took to communicate their stories and we had many people comment on how cathartic the process was in enabling them to voice their experiences.

Maternal bias background

Research around maternal bias is gaining traction and research shows real evidence of a level of maternal bias in organisations, where some colleagues can view mothers, – or pregnant women as less competent and less committed to their jobs (Arena et al, 2023). Further research (Ogden, 2019) has suggested that working mothers can face a specific type of bias named ‘maternal wall bias’, which can manifest itself in different ways, for example in conducting performance evaluations or for taking on challenging assignments or promotion opportunities because of their assumed lack of time and desire (Ogden, 2019). In a milestone study, Correll and colleagues (2007) found evidence for a ‘motherhood penalty’ which demonstrated that working mothers were only recommended 47% of the time for hire, vs 84% of female applicants who didn’t have children and were penalised on a host of measures, including perceived competence. Furthermore, the Equality and Human Rights Commission (2018) found that a third of employers felt that women who become pregnant and new mothers in work are ‘generally less interested’ in career progression, when compared to other employees in their company.

What the survey tells us

As we started to analyse the results, we found 29.2% of free-text responses contained an element of mothers experiencing maternal bias.  Take that into consideration of how many free text responses were received, that’s almost 3000 responses where a mother has felt bias towards her as an individual in the workplace since announcing their pregnancy or returning from maternity leave.

“I was told during my last pregnancy that if I wanted a promotion I would need to “stop getting pregnant”. This was after the loss of my first pregnancy after joining the force”.

Police staff/ Practitioner/ Last period of maternity 2-3 years ago

“Told not to consider promotion until I was no longer a flexible worker”

Police Officer/ Sgt/ Last period of maternity 5+ years ago

“I think regardless of how supportive supervisors and colleagues are – a new mother is never considered for promotions etc. You are almost seen as a liability because you take care of a young child. They would prefer single workers who do not have other responsibilities. It’s not an open culture but definitely exists.”

Police staff/ Practitioner/ Last period of maternity 1-2 years ago

“Better support needed on return from maternity leave and balancing new responsibilities with work responsibilities.  Also, action is needed on unconscious bias where managers assume that you want to focus solely on your children and are not interested in development anymore.”

Police Officer/ Inspector/ Last period of maternity 1-2 years ago

Why it’s important

It’s an evolutionary fact that a large number of employed women will go on to have at least one period of maternity leave during their career. However, there has been little police-based research published recently around officers and staff returning to the workplace after maternity leave.

Historically where police organisations have been male-dominated places of work, organisations now actively promote recruitment drives with one of the aims to diversify the workplace to suit the communities they serve, including increasing the number of female officers recruited. This concerted effort has led to the number of female officers in UK police forces increasing to over 50,000 (Gov.uk 2022). Charman & Tyson (2022) carried out research examining the stark increase of voluntary resignations, some of those reasons cited included the lack of visibility of flexible working mothers in senior roles. Findings in our research support the notion that police organisations must transform working practices around embracing and supporting motherhood if they wish to retain their much longed-for and much-needed diversified workforce.

Let’s not continue to make assumptions on a mother’s behalf about their ambition and commitment to the role just because they had a baby.  What a mother doesn’t learn about time management, multi-tasking, patience, and negotiation when dealing with a teething baby isn’t worth knowing.

Policing for the future needs to embrace working mothers and put an end to the maternal bias they may face as they return to work, regardless of their aspirations. “Have a heart, remember we (mothers) are as much value to the organisation as others…” (Participant 132). Mothers should feel supported and valued by their organisations and policing as a career shouldn’t result in the “motherhood penalty”.

If you would like to know more about this research, please contact us at

Kendal.wright@open.ac.uk

Keely.Duddin@open.ac.uk

Facing the future: Police learning in the metaverse

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by Simon Hull, Lecturer in Work Based Learning at The Open University

There’s always a lot of hype surrounding new technology, how it will work and evolve and often accompanied by claims as to how it will improve our lives. But one vision of our digital future has received increasing exposure in the popular press in recent times that doesn’t yet appear to be fading away: the metaverse.

I’m intrigued by the metaverse. I’ve long since had an interest with virtual reality (VR) and its application to learning in work-based settings, not least operational policing. Indeed, The Open University has made great strides into teaching with VR through the Open Justice court room application, in which learners can explore a court building and learn about how it functions. But the metaverse takes VR several steps further, potentially opening up new avenues for immersive police education and training.

Whilst many people may be new to the term, the metaverse is not a new concept. The idea was first introduced by author Neal Stephenson in his 1992 sci-fi novel called Snow Crash. Stephenson envisaged a digital 3D world called the Metaverse that runs parallel to our own and where its real-life users have avatars that carry out their day-to-day lives in virtual reality. More recently, Ernest Cline’s novel (and subsequent Steven Spielberg movie) Ready Player One depicted a type of metaverse in which society worked, studied and played. The term then gained publicity in 2021 when Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg revealed that the company was being renamed Meta and would focus upon building ‘3D spaces in the metaverse will let you socialize, learn, collaborate and play’ (Meta, no date).

Academic discussion around the implications for using the metaverse in education is not a new concept (Tlili et al., 2022) and there have been many attempts to define what the metaverse is. Mystakidis (2022, pp. 486) defines it as ‘the post-reality universe, a perpetual and persistent multiuser environment merging physical reality with digital virtuality. It is based on the convergence of technologies that enable multisensory interactions with virtual environments, digital objects and people such as virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR)’.

This is quite a mouthful, but many people will be drawn to the idea of existing in a shared virtual world where they can live and work together, building communities that thrive and challenge us just as any other does.

As Mystakidis suggests, the metaverse isn’t really one technology. In 2006, a research body called the Acceleration Studies Foundation (ASF), set out a roadmap in which 4 types of metaverse were conceived, combining real life and virtual reality.

• Augmented Reality can be seen in games such as Pokemon Go and head-up displays (HUD) found in some cars

• Lifelogging, where people capture and share aspects of their daily life through technology is ubiquitous via applications such as Instagram, Twitter and Facebook and also through wearable technology like the Apple Watch

• Mirror Worlds such as Google Maps and Google Earth reflect the real world but add in additional layers of information

• Virtual Reality can be seen in cases including Roblox and Minecraft (Kye et al, 2021).

Howell (2022) links these four concepts to how the metaverse could be used in education, picking out VR as being a crucial aspect in the application of the metaverse in educational settings and it’s VR that many people picture when they think of the metaverse.

It’s also with VR that my own intrigue around how the metaverse could be utilised in police learning is tweaked. VR already allows people to train in unfamiliar environments, becoming proficient in using tools and dealing with situations that may be dangerous, complicated or costly in real-life (think surgeons performing a life-saving operation or firefighters searching a blazing building). The metaverse takes this concept and allows multiple users to exist and collaborate in the same VR world.

I wonder, could this approach be applied to policing?

Communication is a key aspect of policing, not least amongst internal staff. By training together in the metaverse, greater understanding could be achieved and collaborative methods explored, accelerating learning opportunities and providing rich educational environments. For example, rather than training individuals to secure and investigate a crime scene, real-world mimicking simulations could be created in which response officers attend, talk to victims and witnesses, integrate and work with colleagues from specialist units and brief supervisors of their actions. They can also build knowledge as well as skills, learning about the forensic qualities of different materials and objects as they encounter them. Team de-briefings can be held and the scenario could be carried through the full investigation cycle, ending up presenting evidence in court.

Other potential uses could include where police officers and staff  practice conversations that they may undertake in the workplace that are relatively infrequent but that have very high-stakes when they do, such as delivering a death message, talking to a victim of domestic abuse or conducting a disclosure briefing to a  defence solicitor in a custody suite. Learners could learn about psychology and criminology as they walk through crime case studies. Metaverse technology will give a safe space to acquire knowledge, practice skills and discuss the outcomes with colleagues, delivered efficiently without the need for lengthy abstractions from duties.

Of course, there are significant challenges attached to the development of the metaverse and its application to education. Data security, regulation (who will police the metaverse? That’s another question), inequality in access to educational opportunities, and costs (headsets and software development are expensive) (Davis, 2022) are all relevant and could lead to a less than enthusiastic take-up by the public services.

The effect on learners’ mental health through being detached from the real world should not be overlooked. In the metaverse, people can present themselves as they wish to be seen, rather than how they actually are, and lines between the virtual and real worlds may become blurred (Kye et al, 2021). Protecting the welfare of learners will therefore become increasingly valid as opportunities to exist in the metaverse increase.

So, is the metaverse a fad or is it really the next big thing in online technology? Meta are by no means the only company to be investing in this brave new world. Gaming company Roblox already has a significant foothold in the metaverse and Microsoft and Fortnite, amongst others, are developing the technology. The metaverse has the potential to impact upon all of our lives; whether it does so in police learning, virtually or in reality, remains to be seen.

References

Davis, L (2022). How the Metaverse Is Shaping the Future of Education. Available at: https://metapress.com/how-the-metaverse-is-shaping-the-future-of-education/. (Accessed: 6 May 2022).

Howell, J. (2022) Metaverse For Education – How Will The Metaverse Change Education?. Available at: https://101blockchains.com/metaverse-for-education/ (Accessed: 6 May 2022).

Bokyung, K., Nara, H., Eunji, E., Yeonjeong, P. and Soyoung, J. (2021). ‘Educational applications of metaverse: possibilities and limitations’, Journal of Educational Evaluation for Health Professions. 18(32). Available at: doi:10.3352/jeehp.2021.18.32 (Accessed: 8 July 2022).

Meta (no date) Connection is evolving and so are we. Available at: https://about.facebook.com/meta/ (Accessed: 6 May 2022).

Mystakidis, S. (2022). ‘Metaverse’ Encyclopedia 2(1), pp. 486-497. Available at: https://doi.org/10.3390/encyclopedia2010031 (Accessed: 8 July 2022).

Tlili, A., Huang, R., Boulus, S., Liu, D., Zhao, J, Hosny Saleh Metwally, A., Wang, H., Denden, M., Bozkurt, A., Lee, L-H.,  Beyoglu, D., Altinay, F., Sharma, R.C., Altinay, Z., Li, Z., Liu, J., Ahmad, F., Hu, Y., Salha, S., Abed, M., & Burgos, D. (2022). ‘Is Metaverse in education a blessing or a curse: a combined content and bibliometric analysis’, Smart Learning Environments 9 (24). Available at: Is Metaverse in education a blessing or a curse: a combined content and bibliometric analysis | Smart Learning Environments | Full Text (springeropen.com) (Accessed 25 July 2022).