Child Criminal Exploitation (CCE) has been described as the grooming and exploitation of children into criminal activity and has been identified as a key process underlining County Lines drug dealing (HM Government, 2018). Whilst the acronym “CCE” is commonly used to describe Child Criminal Exploitation within academic publications, policy documents, and in the language of those working within roles in this area, the chapter aims to use language which promotes “child first” principles in its approach to the discussion of Child Criminal Exploitation. For reasons which will become apparent later in the chapter, abbreviations of the concept of Child Criminal Exploitation will be avoided when describing children’s experience of exploitation to ensure that their experiences are not minimised. The recently published Jay Review (Action for Children, 2024) found that the lack of a consistent and formal definition of both “child exploitation” and a specific form of child exploitation, “child criminal exploitation” hinders efforts to both prevent and reliably record the overall scale of the problem across the UK. Historically, those subject to exploitation are viewed as perpetrators by statutory agencies rather than as victims, perceived as having made a “choice” to engage in criminal behaviour, exacerbated by the child’s ability to recognise themselves as a victim (Williams & Finlay, 2019). The chapter will aim to: • Identify the lack of a consistent statutory definition of child criminal exploitation • Examine whether the victim/offender nexus permeates victim identification • Explore the implementation of “Child First” principles in current responses to child criminal exploitation