Analysing the scientific literature on policing approaches to disrupt child sexual exploitation | Policing: A Journal of Policy and Practice

Abstract

BACKGROUND

Definition and prevalence of child sexual exploitation

Child sexual exploitation (CSE) is a form of child sexual abuse (CSA) that is a pernicious international issue affecting children/young people worldwide (UNICEF, 2021). Laird et al. (2023) call for a clear definition of CSE to avoid the inadvertent blaming of children/young people that language such as ‘prostituting themselves’ may engender. To this end, they propose a global definition:

CSE is a complex form of sexual violence that affects children and young people, considered an abusive act where an individual or group takes advantage of a power imbalance to use, force, coerce and/or deceive a child or young person into completing or attempting sexual activity, on or off-line; (a) by an offer or actual exchange of unmet needs or wants of the child/young person (e.g., food, clothing, shelter, substances, money, protection, belonging, affection and/or developmental needs or anything of perceived value to the young person or child); and/or (b) for the economic or social advantage of the perpetrator or facilitator; and (c) irrespective of consent or who initiates or solicitations the contact (e.g., child/young person or perpetrator, adult or peer). (p. 476)

The Australian context within the global picture

CSE is increasingly brought to the attention of law enforcement agencies globally and within Australia. In many jurisdictions in Australia, including New South Wales (NSW) where this review was conducted, there are not consistently applied national definitions of CSE, making it difficult for practitioners and agencies to identify, monitor, and respond effectively (Royal Commission, 2017a). Moreover, there is no reliable data on the prevalence of CSE at a population level. However, the Australian Child Maltreatment Study (ACMS) found that CSA is endemic in Australia and the consequences are harmful and long-lasting (Haslam et al., 2023). For example, the ACMS found that among all Australians aged 16–65, more than one in four experienced sexual abuse, of which 37.3% were girls and 18.8% were boys (Haslam et al., 2023). While there is a dearth of CSE prevalence data and existing research has methodological limitations it is conservatively estimated that up to 5% of the world’s children and youth have been subjected to CSE (Laird et al., 2023; Moynihan et al., 2018). Alderson et al.’s (2022) prevalence study found that over half of participants in a UK study had been approached in a sexualized fashion by an adult during childhood with 25% being sexually exploited.

Online CSE increased during the COVID-19 pandemic when public health measures including lockdowns occurred nationally and internationally. For example, UNICEF (2021) reported a 20% increase in cases of online CSE in Cambodia. In Australia, there were 17,400 reports of CSE online material published in 2018 and more than 36,000 reports in 2021/22 (ACCCSE, 2023). Wagner et al. (2018) argue that the scale and complexity of the problem is immense, especially when one considers that 62% of the population uses the internet, making this a policing and social problem of significant proportion.

Challenges for effective policing of CSE in Australia

Policing happens within a societal context where some professional and community attitudes construct children and young people, especially those from marginalized populations, as complicit in the offenses. If individual officers hold these attitudes, it may hamper effective policing and prosecution efforts. There are also systemic issues that may thwart effective policing of CSE.

McFarlane (2021) and her research team unearthed high rates of children/young people missing from Out of Home Care (OOHC) facilities. The report noted that the link between ‘missing young people’ and sexual exploitation was high. However, as the report highlighted:

Although police policies and practices acknowledged the vulnerability of youth missing from OOHC, there was a lack of reliable data in the current study about young people’s experiences while they were missing. (p.25)

The Australian Federal Police (AFP) charged 221 alleged offenders with 1,746 child exploitation-related offences in 2021/22 (Australian Federal Police, 2022). The number of reports of CSE provided by the ACCCSE (2023) and the extent of the problem in Australia are made more worrying by the low charging rates reported by the AFP. Moreover, the AFP charging statistics note that each offender commits multiple offences, which begs the question of what can assist law enforcement efforts to combat CSE effectively?

Disruptive policing as part of the solution

Disruptive policing is as any activity by the police force that ‘aims to disrupt criminality in such a way as to prevent crime from occurring or to reduce its gravity if it does occur’ (Innes and Sheptycki, 2004, p. 2). In cases of CSE, it seems evident that any activity that prevents harm to children/young people or reduces the harm is a desirable outcome. Moreover, disruptive policing in the CSE context removes the focus from ‘children an evidentiary source’ to ‘children as protected’ with the duty of reducing or stopping CSE from being placed in the adult professional remit. Moreover, disruptive policing provides a vital means to stop offenders that low rates of prosecution or custodial sentences have not been achieved (Jago et al., 2011).

Research was undertaken to assess the implementation of a British government initiative to shift the focus away from seeing sexually exploited children as actively engaging in criminal activities to viewing them as children in need of safeguarding from perpetrators who entrap and sexually exploit children (Pearce, 2014). Pearce (2014) highlighted the crucial role of police activities in targeting offenders, grouping these activities according to two modes. The first mode, disruption, entails a broad range of hard and soft activities to deter the offender. The second mode, prosecution, refers to using the legal and court processes to initiate legal proceedings against offenders. In the US context, Cross, and Whitcomb (2017) highlighted the importance of disruptive tactics, given the challenges associated with prosecuting CSA & CSE, which include a heavy reliance on the child’s testimony within an adversarial justice system. In their analysis of disruption, Cross and Whitcomb (2017) highlighted the importance of a multiagency response to disruption, concluding that the ‘need for external corroboration may be even more critical if there are increasing numbers of trafficking and sexting cases involving teenage victims, whose credibility may be questioned’ (p. 27).

A vital step towards enhancing law enforcement responses to children and young people who have been subjected to CSE is to investigate international best practice. Such an investigation can inform professional policing practice standards and enhance the service provided to children and young people who have been or are at risk of CSE. There is a major lacuna in the Australian scholarship on the place of disruptive policing to assist in the prevention of CSE and the protection of children/young people from this form of sexualized violence. As part of addressing this gap and to add to the scholarship on the development of excellence in policing service in Australia, this scoping review aims to understand disruptive policing better. The following two research questions underpinned the scoping review:

• What practices are utilized under the auspice of disruptive policing?

• How effective are disruptive policing practices in preventing or protecting children and young people from CSE?

METHOD

Search strategy

A scoping review methodology was chosen to guide this review as it allows for the mapping of current literature, (Arksey and O’Malley, 2005) in order to isolate the main concepts (Munn et al., 2018) about disruptive policing we were investigating. Furthermore, a PICOS strategy (Richardson et al., 1995) was used to facilitate the search approach to maximize the precision of retrieval of the literature (Booth et al., 2000). The PICOS strategy used is summarized in Table 1.

Specific inclusion/exclusion criteria were applied to the PICOS strategy. Inclusion criteria captured international and Australian studies written in English from 2010 onwards that outlined disruptive police practices in relation to CSE assessing the outcomes listed in the PICOS strategy. Studies that reported on any aspect of policing that did not relate to CSE or any studies related to CSE, but not disruptive policing were excluded. In addition, studies that are not written in English were excluded. We utilized the ‘Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis Protocols’ (Moher et al., 2015) to conduct the review (Table 2). We worked to the specific definitions of CSE, and disruptive policing outlined in the background to this article.

Data extraction

The review was conducted in three waves. The first wave involved identifying and extracting articles from six electronic databases: CINAHL, ERIC, Family and Society Studies, PsycINFO, Scopus, and Social Services Abstracts. The second wave involved the downloading of reports from websites searched within Australia. The third wave focused on grey literature unearthed from the previous two searches. The PRISMA chart in Table 2 describes this process in more detail.

The database search strategy identified various search terms that linked the population with the intervention and outcomes of interest. The search strategies identified keywords in titles and abstracts, and subject headings permitted by the database. The search terms were ‘child’ OR ‘children’ OR ‘young people’ OR ‘young person’ OR ‘young adult’ OR ‘young m*n’ OR ‘young wom*n’ OR ‘youth*’ OR ‘teen*’ OR ‘juvenile*’ OR ‘Adolesc*’ OR ‘minor’ OR ‘minors’ AND ‘sexual exploitation’, OR ‘sex trafficking’ OR ‘sex trading’ OR ‘prostitution’ AND ‘police officer*’ OR ‘policing’ OR ‘law enforcement’ OR ‘cops’ OR ‘police’.

Data management

The databases searched allowed for real-time download of articles to Endnote, a software program that enables easy downloading and accessing of stored data. The results from websites and grey literature were manually downloaded to Endnote. It also allowed the deletion of duplicates across databases before the review proper was started. After removing duplicates, all selected articles that met the eligibility criteria, were recorded, and characteristics of the studies were recorded on an Excel spreadsheet according to title, author, journal, date, context, concept, methodology, key findings. They were reviewed by two reviewers to check for bias. Subsequently, the articles synthesized for full review were recorded on a separate Excel spreadsheet which included an additional column to record the results of the thematic analysis based on the research questions (practices, effectiveness).

RESULTS

A total of one hundred and forty-nine (n = 149) articles were downloaded from the databases after repeats, and non-relevant articles were removed after an in-depth review of all abstracts was completed. Of these, one hundred and twenty-two (n = 122) were deemed irrelevant or outside the scope of the eligibility criteria. Excluded articles mainly contained material that centred on adult survivors of sex trafficking, adult sex workers, CSE perpetrator/offender characteristics, or generalized discussion of child sexual assault rather than CSE specifically. Twenty-seven (n = 27) articles were deemed eligible and screened in because they discussed disruptive policing within the article abstract. However, upon a complete reading of the articles, only six (Table 3) addressed the eligibility criteria and were accepted for a full analytic review. The low number of articles retrieved from the databases highlights the need for more academic attention within the social sciences and law enforcement disciplines on the issue of disruptive policing in relation to CSE. Furthermore, of the six journal articles reviewed, only one (Pearce, 2014) gave direct attention to disruptive policing as a specific issue in combating CSE.

Due to the paucity of literature unearthed in the databases a grey literature search was conducted. Data was also obtained from the reference section of previously read literature. This approach continued throughout the search; the reference lists of all data screened in were reviewed and seemingly relevant articles were screened against the inclusion/exclusion criteria. This strategy eventuated in the downloading of fifty-seven (n = 57) resources. After reviewing the titles and abstracts of these resources, thirty-one (n = 31) publications were included for a full review as they had some mention of or relevance to disruptive policing (Table 4). Most of the reports reviewed originated from the UK. A range of charitable, government, and academic institutions were represented in the literature unearthed. It was not surprising that the UK dominated the scholarship as the UK had a government inquiry into CSE in 2015 outlining their commitment to eliminate the exploitation of children and make CSE a legislative and policing priority (HM Government UK. (2017)Tackling Child Sexual Exploitation, 2015).

Themes arising from literature

Core themes were synthesized from the literature that spoke to the inquiry of this review into what practices are utilized under the auspice of disruptive policing and what is regarded as effective.

Components of disruptive policing

The six core themes that were synthesized to explore what practices are utilized under the auspice of disruptive policing are legislation, police powers under the legislation, service delivery models of police response, multiagency approach, relationships with young people and trauma-informed training of police officers.

Legislation

Under criminal legislation in the UK, specific offenses can be used to prosecute alleged perpetrators of CSE. These offenses are stipulated in the Sexual Offences Act (2003). A report by Barnardos (Beckett, 2014) highlighted that most respondents to a UK parliamentary inquiry felt that the Sexual Offences Act (2003) was most fitted to the purposes of tackling CSE. Various legal avenues exist within the Sexual Offences Act (2003) that can assist police in disruptive practices to combat CSE. Amongst these are Sexual Offences Prevention Orders, Foreign Travel Orders and Risk of Sexual Harm Orders. Breaching any of these orders is an offence.

In addition to the Sexual Offences Act (2003) there are provisions in The Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act (2014) which gives police powers to require an owner, operator, or manager of an accommodation establishment to disclose information where intelligence indicates the premises are being or have been used for child sexual exploitation. There was debate within the Inquiry as to whether CSE should be made a separate crime. However, legislating a new crime was rejected in favour of the recommendation for police to be better trained and informed of alternative options to disrupt CSE.

In the Australian context the Royal Commission Executive Summary Report (2017a) and the Contemporary Out of Home Care Report (2017b, Vol 12) from the Royal Commission into institutional responses into child sexual abuse recommended disruptive activities to enhance the investigation and prosecution of child sexual exploitation offences but no recommendations to current legislation to support this. In the same year, as the Royal Commission called for a disruption of sexual exploitation offending, the Victorian Department of Health and Human Services released guidelines for intervention in child sexual exploitation which suggested the legal options for disruptive policing to include either ‘harbouring notices’, ‘loitering letters’, or family violence or personal safety intervention orders taken out against persons of interest on behalf of a child. Some of the literature from the UK took a more comprehensive look at the use of police powers as part of disruptive policing.

Police powers under the legislation

Apart from the Sexual Offences Act (2003) the literature from the UK referenced nine Civil Orders and two other means of disruption; Child Abduction Warning Notices, Sexual Harm Prevention Orders, Sexual Risk Orders, Slavery and Trafficking Prevention Orders (STPOs) and Slavery and Trafficking Risk Orders (STROs), Criminal Behaviour Orders, Notification Orders, Non-Molestation Orders Exclusion Orders which could be sought in tandem with an Interim Care Order or Emergency Protection Order, and Wardship. Across the literature, Child Abduction Warning Notices were regarded as one of the most vital tools in disrupting CSE. However, there is no statutory power for breaching notices and it was felt that there was a need to create an offense of breaching a notice which would enable the police to intervene more effectively to avoid an escalation in the seriousness and repetition of the offense.

The North Lincolnshire Safeguarding Report (2021) looked at other formal and informal disruption measures that included obtaining orders on an identified individual, investigation of other crime types, such as drugs or theft, increased police attention on an individual (checking car tax, roadworthiness of car, etc.), increased police presence in suspected hotspots (online or offline), working with internet providers to address online risks.

The minimal attention to disrupting CSE in the Australian scholarship not only exists as a paucity of research but as a lack of discussion on Australian police activity that does not solely rely on a legislated response. However, one report by Victorian Department of Health and Human Services (2013) did include disruption as a factor in the response to CSE. The report outlined five elements to response: prevention, detection, disruption, intervention, recovery, and reconnection.

Service delivery models for police response

The research by Allnock et al. (2017) unearthed four models for police responses to CSE in operation in the UK: integrated specialist CSE teams, victim-focused specialist CSE team, intelligence-focused specialist CSE team with dispersed victim support, and, no specialist CSE team with dispersed victim support. These findings related more to the composition and location of policing teams rather than models of disruptive policing activities. Moreover, despite Jago and Pearce’s (2008) contention that colocation is the strongest form of robust form of organizational response there was no discussion in this research or across the literature on what factors make which response models the most effective in enhancing practices to disrupt CSE.

A multiagency approach

A multiagency approach to enhance disruptive policing was one of the foremost complementary initiatives cited across the literature. In 2012, the Greater Manchester Safeguarding Partnership (GMSP) published a broad overview of the current response to CSE in their catchment area (The Phoenix Project). Over and above the police and child protection roles, they explored the creative use of other agencies and their powers, which could be deployed to disrupt CSE:

• Fire and Rescue Service: Powers to inspect unfit premises.

• Housing providers: Powers to deal with issues affecting the health and safety of occupants and the management of premises.

• Trading standards: Powers to access trade premises during business hours, usually without giving notice for routine inspection, for example: food safety, health, and safety.

• Local authority licensing: Powers to enter premises to ensure compliance with licensing conditions.

• Local authority planning: Powers to investigate alleged breaches of planning control and take action upon breaches.

• Community safety: Local authorities and their partners have powers that can be used against a person or premise in various situations relating to community safety and protection.

• Benefit fraud investigations: Powers to instigate a fraud investigation that requires gathering information on employees and can involve visiting properties to speak with the occupants who reside or work there.

While an effective disruption strategy may involve a range of measures, it relies on close collaboration between leading agencies to ensure its success. Consequently, information exchange and intelligence were promoted as two effective means to bolster a multiagency approach.

Information exchange was seen as important to broaden the protective net around children and young people by helping to enhance preventive action to meet children’s needs before they were entrapped and develop collaborative case plans (Allnock et al., 2017; Jago and Pearce, 2008; Sharp-Jeffs et al., 2017). Some researchers also noted that information exchange played an essential part in intelligence gathering (Jago and Pearce, 2008; Scott et al., 2019).

The intelligence base discussed in the literature was primarily drawn from police data (Allnock et al., 2017) and generally lacked the input of lead agencies involved with children and young people, such as statutory child protection services, education, and health and human services. Moreover, the findings found little evidence of using the data effectively to profile or analyse intelligence. When surveillance was noted as a disruptive tactic, there was no discussion of the means of surveillance employed by police, whether electronic or through information from informants. Scott et al. (2019) noted the controversy around the surveillance of alleged offenders, especially if children and young people are being watched without due notice. Despite this ethical dilemma, some police forces utilized surveillance to disrupt offenders before interactive physical offenses took place.

Relationship with young people

The themes located so far in the literature pivoted towards police directly engaging in disruptive practices with offenders or engaging in coordinated responses with other professionals. However, some literature also highlighted the need for police officers to be child-focused. Hickle (2019) extolled the importance of police officers noticing potential trauma presentations within children/young people and responding to them in ways that promote safety and trust. This trauma-informed approach would undoubtedly assist in relationship building between police and children/young people, which Williams (2019) identified as crucial to disruptive policing. The First Step Report (Pona et al., 2019) was commissioned by the National Police Chiefs’ Council and the Children’s Society. It included a discussion of the part played by the return to home interviews (RHIs) after a young person goes missing in disrupting CSE. Participants in the research felt that RHIs were part of a safeguarding process that starts from the moment the child is reported to the police as missing to the use of the interview information for disruption purposes. As well as acknowledging the importance of RHIs for children, RHIs were acknowledged as an opportunity for police to gather, share, and analyse interview information.

Trauma-informed training

Training is required if there are expectations on police officers to have a child-focused trauma-informed lens in their policing. Several publications (Jago and Pearce, 2008; Pearce et al., 2009) extolled the need for police to receive training in the evidence base of trauma knowledge and responding to victim-survivors in an informed way. The Centre of Expertise on Child Sexual Abuse (2022) (CSA Centre) in the UK piloted a two-day training course on sexual abuse of children they developed for the police force. They wrote an evaluation of the training (2017) that reported several respondents said the course would change their practice with children/young people, and 90% said they would integrate the learning into their policing role. Despite the promotion of the need for trauma-informed policing, there was limited discussion within the literature of the curricular content needed to promote a trauma-informed policing approach and the effectiveness of providing trauma-informed training to law enforcement professionals.

Therefore the U.K. College of Policing (2021) website was mined to see what training if any existed for UK police on CSE. The result showed that the college provided a substantial guide to police officers on core issues such as definitions, signs, risk factors, forms of exploitation, and offender tactics. It also alerted police officers to consider locations of concerns, whether physical (e.g. shopping centers, train stations) or digital (e.g. social media, particular grooming apps).

The literature showcased a range of disruptive techniques and the varied uptake of these tactics by the police force. In addition, some attention was given to the evidence-based debate about disruptive policing.

Effectiveness

Scott et al. (2019) stipulated that at the time of writing, no research investigated the overall effectiveness of disruptive policing in the UK. However, Jago et al. (2011) reviewed a child protection initiative in England (Local Safeguarding Children’s Boards, LSCBs) which examined intervention effectiveness to protect children/young people from CSE. The research findings found pockets of good practice occurring. In the areas where there was an active effort toward disrupting the offender, several tactics seemed to assist, namely monitoring identified hotspots or places where young people congregated, liaising with local businesses, raising awareness among young people, and intelligence gathering by the police. Some concerns were raised about covert surveillance to ensure child protection procedures were upheld. Moreover, a range of improvements in detection and protection were identified as being required. In terms of disruptive policing, the research found that the LSCBs did not take an active role in disrupting and prosecuting offenders. Reviews of prosecutions highlighted that few cases came to court or led to convictions, and young people regarded the court proceeding as a very negative or harmful experience.

Only one publication (Radford et al., 2015) linked disruptive policing to evidence-based practice. In relation to the evidence scaling that the report utilized, they placed disruptive policing under the category of a ‘promising practice’, hence signaling support for disruptive policing but noting that more awareness and research into its effectiveness was required. Therefore, while it needs to be acknowledged that research into the area of CSE is growing, there was very little evidence in the literature on what factors are responsible for effective disruptive policing.

Challenges for disruptive policing

The literature was replete with examples of challenges for the operationalization and effectiveness of disruptive policing. UNICEF (2016) reported on the difficulties that are faced by professionals when resources and workforce capacity are low or do not exist to combat CSE. Allnock et al. (2017) noted a myriad of challenges, such as absence of data and data recording problems, some failing in multiagency collaboration and information sharing, children/young people unwilling to engage, resourcing, no precise measure of what effective disruption looks like, some lack of awareness about approaches to disruption and prosecution and inconsistent prosecution practices.

Studies’ limitations

While the studies were informative in their content overall, some limitations exist. The dominance of the UK discourse on disruptive policing left a distinct lack of international perspective. An additional limitation that was present in all the studies was the lack of an intersectional analysis that examined the need for differing disruptive approaches for children/young people with assigned disabilities, culturally and spiritually diverse, LGBTQIA+, and gender identities. Moreover, the lack of epistemic contribution by young people as experts by experience also typified the studies.

DISCUSSION

This review was designed to unearth the literature on evidence-based disruptive policing of CSE. As such, the two questions guiding the search were: What practices are utilized under the auspice of disruptive policing? How effective are disruptive policing practices in preventing or protecting children and young people from CSE? Central to this review was how any of these practices could be adapted to Australian context as this is the country of interest for both the authors.

The findings have been woven together to form a matrix of four elements represented in a contextual framework (Fig. 1). This conceptual framework was categorized into four broad themes (legislation, policy, collaboration, practice). This framework recognizes that each state in Australia works under different legislative jurisdictions (child protection and criminal). This allows for the interpretation of the findings under these four themes to be adapted to the nuances in policy and practice that exist in each state.

Figure 1.

Conceptual framework to explore disruptive policing.

Legal approaches as a form of ‘hard’ disruption policing practices (Della porta, 1995) were replete in the literature and often married with ‘soft’ approaches (Della porta, 1995). From reviewing the range of legislative approaches taken in the UK, it appears crucial to activate a combination of criminal and civil legislation in disruptive plans in Australia. The civil measures highlight the need for a creative approach outside the traditional child protection or prosecutorial operating mode. The challenge for Australian policing is the fact that the range of legislative approaches to disruptive policing currently does not exist in all states. Moreover, the most notable differences for Australia as compared to the UK is the fact that each state operates under different civil and criminal legislation. The challenge for Australia is to consider the interlinking of State and Federal jurisdictions and how this can work together to provide a Nationwide coordinated law-base approach. It was interesting to note that one of the publications highlighted that CSE is a process crime, not a crime of distinct acts. This requires legislation change that acknowledges specific entrapment tactics as a criminal process that allows for evidence gathering as a mapping exercise.

The nexus between ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ disruption policing must also occur within the policy arena. If policing in Australia is to embrace a more expansive and creative form of disruptive policing, policy initiatives not just within the police force but within the child protection and welfare fields need to adopt a proactive disruption stance. This may call for a suite of changes in, for example, risk and safety tools, information exchange protocols, role definitions, interventions pathways. Core to the success of these policy changes is the ability of professionals to work collaboratively with each other and children/young people.

Effective disruptive policing is not the duty of the police force alone. It requires a practice approach reaching beyond the confines of the policing domain into the lives of everyday community service providers. This collaborative approach reduces the risk of children/young people falling through the service gaps and strengthens the safety net around them. Currently in Australia, there are various child protection forums within local districts that involve interagency collaboration over child protection matters. In the face of the competing and extensive demands on child protection, police, health, OOHC, and welfare staff, it seems reasonable to harness the local expertise of the various agencies and integrate attention on CSE within these forums. However, it cannot be assumed that all agencies will have in-depth knowledge of CSE. Therefore, it is highly recommended that agencies have designated ‘champions’ of practice who are not only the arbiters of knowledge within their agencies but also representatives at the various child protection forums. Training is required if these content experts are to contribute meaningfully to their agencies and the interagency context. Moreover, training is required if practice is to remain responsive to the needs of children/young people.

Arising from the literature was the need to meet children’s needs to divert them from being entrapped in CSE. These needs can only be met if they are recognized as agentic citizens, not only victims of the violence and abuse they have been subjected to. The people most qualified to articulate what these needs entail are children/ young people. Therefore, engaging in meaningful and non-authoritarian ways with children/young people is essential. Indeed, the NSW Police Youth Strategy report (2019) highlighted research that illuminated the importance of ‘mutual respect and understanding’ and ‘sensitivity around verbal and nonverbal communication between police and young people, including listening’ (p.8).

Practice is improved and maintained by ongoing training and critical reflexive practice. Much of the literature reviewed recommended training for all professionals working with children/young people. Most of the publications that mentioned training specified trauma training as a priority. Undoubtedly, trauma training is essential in this field. However, there was little emphasis on training on violence-specific training (i.e. offender tactics) and the impact this has on the pain-based responses of children that continue to trap them in exploitative relationships. There was also no mention of non-death loss as an essential training issue. Considering the depth of non-death loss experienced by children/young people in OOHC and residential care and the grief-based responses that may lead them to be trapped in CSE, this form of grief and loss must be included in the training. In addition, this training would be strengthened in an interagency forum to cement the cross-agency relationships that much of the literature recommended.

CONCLUSION

This review revealed that an increasing interest in combating CSE has led to a growth in professional practice and academic exploration of what is required to disrupt the activities of offenders. If the call for raising professional awareness of CSE (Jago and Pearce, 2008) is to be heeded, then it would be important to see more publications in journals accessed by various professionals generally and specifically in the fields of law enforcement, statutory child protection, education and health and human services. Therefore, no matter what form of disruptive policing law enforcement agencies may continue to develop, further research must be conducted to ensure any disruptive action are firmly founded in evidenced best policing practice: Evidenced practice that seeks solutions to what thwarts disruptive policing, and what supports its effectiveness.

Most publications originated from the UK, with some limited US publications unearthed. There was a distinct lack of input from other worldviews. The debate on combatting CSE would be enriched with a more diverse global perspective, with Australia stepping forward to invest in its research and proactive-based approaches to CSE.

REFERENCES

© The Author(s) 2024. Published by Oxford University Press.