NCA targets boys and young men at risk of cyber crime

The National Crime Agency published a descriptive evaluation of Cyber Prevent on January 14, 2026, as it widened efforts to steer boys and young men with cyber skills away from crime and into legal training. Its brochure for 12- to 17-year-olds, titled Your Future Is at Your Fingertips, tells teenagers to develop cyber skills without breaking the law.

Cyber Choices sits at the centre of that approach. The NCA says the programme was created to help people make informed choices and use cyber skills legally, and that it is coordinated nationally by the agency and delivered by Cyber Choices teams in Regional Organised Crime Units and Local Police Force Cyber Teams. Sheffield Digital has described the same model as one that prevents young people from committing cyber crime and directs them toward a career in tech.

The logic behind the intervention is rooted in the online habits that can pull teenagers in. The NCA’s Pathways Into Cyber Crime assessment, published on January 13, 2017, said there were a number of young people in the UK becoming involved in cyber-dependent offending. Later NCA intelligence said the barrier to entry had fallen because of DDoS-for-hire services and step-by-step instructional videos on social media. Earlier reporting on the same pathways found that many young offenders started on game-cheat websites or forums that taught them how to change, or mod, games.

That focus on early diversion comes from the age profile of the cases police are seeing. BBC reporting said the average age of people involved in NCA cyber investigations was 17, which is why law enforcement and partners have tried to intervene before curiosity hardens into criminality. The approach is less about waiting for an arrest and more about catching vulnerable teenagers while they are still looking for somewhere to use their skills.

The wider stakes are no longer theoretical. In 2015, the NCA and police carried out national activity to help businesses and the public guard against cyber crime, and teenage hackers have since been linked to major disruption. Owen Flowers, from Walsall, and Thalha Jubair, from east London, were sentenced to five years and six months in prison after carrying out a 2024 cyber-attack on Transport for London while they were teenagers.

The question for Cyber Prevent is whether the programme’s education-first model reduces later offending or simply gives police a more structured way to watch for it. The NCA’s 2026 reoffending evaluation shows the agency is now trying to measure that outcome, not just assume it.