This chapter considers how CL managers employ strategic and tactical actions to control their lines to keep them active and thriving: firstly, through exploitation and; secondly, via the County Line Control Repertoire which provides multiple tactical sanctions for CL operatives to control the line.

Exploitation by street gangs and organised crime networks is UK-wide, and the NCA Briefing Report (2016) noted 80 per cent of reporting areas confirmed exploitation of children aged 12–18 by gangs. Within county lines, exploitation of both adults and young people is fundamental to all CL business models and is essential to achieving the profit margins making CL models a profitable enterprise.

Forms of child criminal exploitation (CCE) can take different forms and also operate within general criminal behaviours. Within CLs, however, it can include: grooming and selection, recruitment, running drug lines, interlay carrying drugs, hiding or carrying weapons, money laundering and so on. Increasing job differentiation within CL models offers specific roles for young people and as models evolve exploitation can magnify, not least because young people are exploited by way of mitigating risk for older USG and CL affiliates.

Exploitation is often targeted towards the most vulnerable who are exploited by way of risk mitigation and risk avoidance strategies employed by Olders. A USG Older with years of acquired street capital can detect such vulnerabilities lying beneath street swagger, bravado and attitude. For local charities and agencies, however, such ‘in-your-face’ presentation can mask vulnerabilities. Moyle (2019) invites us to reconsider vulnerability within the nexus of victim/offender and revisit the definition and application of the term. Windle et al (2020) in their most recent work, ‘“Vulnerable” kids going country’, talk in-depth about the perception, definition and interpretation of ‘vulnerability’. They further note that young people involved in running county lines frequently present front line practitioners with a hard-bitten street-tough exterior that mitigates against viewing them as either vulnerable or victimised. It is likely that such presentations represent adherence to the street code (Anderson, 1999) and to street capital and immersion into the social field, which over time inhibits ability to ‘code-switch’ (Anderson, 1999, Harding, 2014: 197).