The police are currently investigating a record number of modern slavery cases involving children, according to a report released on May 22.
Under the Modern Slavery Act, the number of ‘live’ police investigations involving children has surged alarmingly from 53 in 2017 to 475 in 2019 – an increase of 796%.
The vast majority are being exploited by criminal gangs and forced into county lines which run drugs from urban centres to more rural towns.
Children are also being sexually exploited by paedophile rings. These latest figures now mean that more than a third of the 1,370 existing modern slavery investigations involve children, up from 18% two years ago.
The Modern Slavery Act, introduced in 2015, consolidated existing laws on human trafficking into one place, gave the police more powers to intervene and introduced tougher penalties for those found guilty.
