Violence-as-a-Service Providers Increasingly Recruit Minors to Carry Out Harmful Acts
Young adults without a criminal record are being recruited to cause harm as part of the violence-as-a-service process.
“Young people are being deliberately targeted and recruited to commit a wide range of crimes, from drug trafficking and cyberattacks to online fraud and violent extortion,” according to Europol’s Operational Task Force GRIMM. The taskforce was established to tackle violence-as-a-service, or the outsourcing of violent acts to criminal service providers.
Europol released analysis about the chain of criminal roles involved in violence-as-a-service and details on where minors fit into the process. It identified four key stages, which often involve different actors from different countries:
- Instigator. This person typically orders and finances the crime. The individual is usually not in the same country as the target of the intended attack.
- Recruiter. This person acts as an intermediary to approach potential perpetrators to carry out the violent act. Recruiters usually find perpetrators using encrypted messaging apps and gaming or chat platforms.
- Enabler. This person organizes the conditions for the crime to happen, including logistics, tools, contacts, and financial arrangements.
- Perpetrator. This person who physically commits the crime. This person may be a hitman or part of a professional hit-squad. But in many cases, the perpetrator is now a minor with no criminal record.
“The separation of these roles means criminals can operate like an outsourced service: instigators pay, recruiters source manpower, facilitators prepare the ground, and perpetrators take the risks,” according to Europol. “This fragmented chain makes it harder to track back to the masterminds, while making it easier to manipulate young people.”
The Focus on Young People
Violence-as-a-service providers also look to recruit young people without criminal records to carry out everything from drug trafficking to cyberattacks to violent extortion because they are perceived to be invisible to law enforcement.
“Social media platforms and messaging apps are used to reach young people through coded language, memes, and gamified tasks,” according to Europol. “In return for money, status, or a sense of belonging, they are drawn into criminal schemes that are both violent and transnational.”
In the European Union Serious and Organized Crime Threat Assessment 2025 (EU-SOCTA), published in March 2025, Europol inoted there appears to be a “ready supply” of people willing to be recruited to commit violence. The violence is often premeditated and prepared, such as a score-settling hit, professionally planned and contracted killings, debt collection, or extortion to settle criminal conflicts.
“Increasingly, executors of violence appear to have little knowledge of the intended victims and their physical surroundings prior to a hit or assassination,” the EU-SOCTA explained. “Facilitators are sometimes also recruited ad hoc in online group chats for specific tasks such as surveillance and logistics. This leads to shorter time frames to set up the violence. Badly informed and inexperienced perpetrators increase the threat of causing collateral damage to unintended victims.”
Young people—individually or as part of a group or street gang—are increasingly involved in these violence-as-a-service plots to carry out street robberies, extortion and racketeering, child sexual abuse and trafficking, or drug trafficking, the EU-SOCTA assessed.
Europol analysts also expressed concern that there appears to be a supply of young people who are “willing and looking for assignments to participate in violent acts.” Some of these young people may be recruited as part of a broader violent extremism trend of online groups united behind the common purpose of “destroying civilized society through the corruption of young people,” according to the EU-SOCTA.
“Based on their extreme ideological views, criminal actors groom and victimize children, coercing them to commit violent acts, including sexual abuse, acts of cruelty, torture, and murders,” the EU-SOCTA said.
Europol Responds
The key roles in violence-as-a-service announcement from Europol is just the latest effort from its Operational Taskforce GRIMM, which was established in April 2025 to address the problem. The taskforce is supported by law enforcement in Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, The Netherlands, Norway, and Sweden, with Europol providing operational support, threat analysis, and coordination.
Europol ramped up efforts to look at violence-as-a-service after releasing its findings from the EU-SOCTA and additional threat intelligence determining that minors are now involved in more than 70 percent of criminal markets, including cybercrime and online fraud, drug trafficking, migrant smuggling, and property crime.
“The recruitment of minors into serious and organized crime and terrorism is not a new phenomenon; however, it has increasingly become a tactic used by criminal networks to avoid detection, capture, and prosecution,” according to a Europol intelligence notification. “In recent years, this trend has expanded across more countries, with recruitment methods evolving and minors being tasked with violent acts such as extortion and killings.”
Europol has also released an awareness guide for parents to identify warning signs their children might exhibit if they’re being recruited into one of these schemes.
“Look out for the subtle signs—sudden behavior changes, expensive new items with no explanation,” Europol said. “If your child stops asking for money but seems to have it, that’s not independence—it’s a red flag.”
