Schimarr Smith, 20, has been jailed for more than five years for running a county drugs line from Luton to Cambridgeshire.

In a first for Bedfordshire Police, the Judge also made Smith subject to a STPO after the court heard how he exploited two vulnerable boys, moving them across the region and placing them in drug dens so that they were easily accessible to his customers.

Smith became a person of interest when police attended an address in Cambridge and discovered a boy with Class A drugs and a mobile phone.

After an investigation was launched, officers conducted a warrant at Runham Close in Luton where Smith was arrested alongside Dante Daley-Witter, 21.

In the property they found more than £2,000 cash, two bags of individually packaged deals of cocaine and heroin, phones, knives, and a stab proof vest.

Phone work completed by police analysts discovered Smith’s phone also co-located with the boys’ phones on numerous occasions, making the same journeys where the boys were transported by taxi from Luton to Cambridge and then left there.

During the sentencing on Thursday 28 March, His Honour Judge Johnson made note that although Smith had clearly been a victim of modern slavery himself when he was younger, he had chosen two boys ‘ripe for exploitation’ and done the same to them, choosing to perpetuate the cycle instead of breaking it.

Schimarr Smith of no fixed abode, pleaded guilty to two counts of modern-day slavery offences and conspiracy to supply cocaine and heroin. He was sentenced to serve five years and one month, initially to be served in a Young Offender Institution. He was also made subject to an STPO for 10 years, preventing him from owning more than one mobile device, and most importantly from having any unsupervised contact or communication of with anyone under the age of 18.

Dante Daley-Witter, of Runham Close, Luton, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to supply cocaine, heroin and cannabis and was sentenced to two years and four months in prison.