County Lines in Context

Abstract

While the focus of this book is County Lines, it is important to understand how and why the phenomenon has become so widespread in public discourse. County Lines presents as a form of criminal exploitation that mainly affects children and young people from disadvantaged communities, who already have a whole host of vulnerabilities that make them susceptible to crime, coercion, and manipulation. The criminal exploitation of children and County Lines presented themselves synonymously amongst the consciousness of professionals working with children and young people, however only County Lines became the prominent focus for law enforcement agencies, resulting in understandings of the phenomenon that are incomplete and shaped mainly by the presumptions and conjectures of professionals and only amplified and distorted by the mainstream media. This chapter aims to provide a more complete overview of the state of art when it comes to County Lines.