Ex-criminal reveals devastating consequences of young people choosing life of crime
All this week we're looking at how kids are being exploited by criminal gangs to deal drugs across the country
As we continue our County Lines investigation, we're hearing first hand how gangs go about recruiting vulnerable people and kids across Merseyside.
It's after we revealed that children as young as seven are being used as drug mules in certain parts of the country.
Sicarius Mcgrath was a career criminal who turned his life around after being released from prison last year.
He wants kids to consider the consequences before going down the same path he did :
"We used to terrorise kids to carry guns or mind things for us but a lot of them don't want to do it. They're acting under duress or the threat of violence.
"It'll either come to addiction, where you're addicted to drugs like a junkie on the streets or it'll come to a long prison sentence or it'll come to death.
"A lot of friends I have they're all doing 15s, 25, 30s. Some of them are doing 35s, and is that life you want? I know, anyone one fo them who are sat in prison now doing a 35, if they had the opportunity to get out and work in Macdonalds then they'd do it. One hundred percent.
"There is no winning the system; the system is designed to break you and then you're in jail with the same people every day around the same creatures smoking spice and it's not nice. It's a nightmare".