Abstract
In March 2020, the UK was placed in lockdown following the spread of the Covid-19 virus. Just as legitimate workplaces made changes to enable their employees to work from home, the illicit drugs trade also made alternative arrangements, adapting its supply models to ensure continuity of operations. Based upon qualitative interviews with 46 practitioners, this paper assesses how front-line professionals have experienced and perceived the impact of Covid-19 on child criminal exploitation and County Lines drug supply in the UK. Throughout the paper, we highlight perceived adaptations to the County Lines supply model, the impact of lockdown restrictions on detection and law enforcement activities aimed at County Lines, and on efforts to safeguard children and young people from criminal exploitation. Our participants generally believed that the pandemic had induced shifts to County Lines that reflected an ongoing evolution of the drug supply model and changes in understanding or attention because of Covid-19 restrictions, rather than a complete reconstitution of the model itself. Practitioners perceived that Covid-19 has had, and continues to have, a significant impact on some young people’s vulnerability to exploitation, on the way in which police and frontline practitioners respond to County Lines and child criminal exploitation, and on the way illegal drugs are being moved and sold.
Highlights
The onset of the Covid-19 pandemic in March 2020 was closely followed by substantial media speculation (Eastwood et al 2020; Grierson and Walker 2020; Pidd 2020; Tidy 2020), as well as reports from frontline practitioners (National YouthExtended author information available on the last page of the article1 3 Vol.:(0123456789)Trends in Organized CrimeAgency 2020; Wedlock and Melina 2020), that lockdown restrictions imposed to stem rates of infection were having a clear impact on ‘County Lines’ drug distribution and child criminal exploitation in the UK
Participants included a) practitioners involved in frontline service provision with young people currently or previously involved in County lines (CL), or considered at-risk of becoming involved; b) law enforcement officers with portfolio responsibility for policing CL and illegal drug supply; and c) practitioners from law enforcement, nongovernmental or other statutory bodies working in analytical roles with responsibility for CL and illegal drug supply
Upon thematic analysis of the data, we identified three main themes relating to the effect of Covid-19 on the CL environment
Summary
Agency 2020; Wedlock and Melina 2020), that lockdown restrictions imposed to stem rates of infection were having a clear impact on ‘County Lines’ drug distribution and child criminal exploitation in the UK. Reductions in reports of missing children were initially taken as a sign that fewer young people were being exploited through County Lines (Caluori 2020), while other reports hypothesised that drug distribution networks may have instead developed a variety of new approaches and supply tactics to avoid detection by police (Caluori 2020; Pidd 2020; Saggers 2020a, 2020b). Youth work and child protection practitioners all outlined concerns that lockdown restrictions may have made some young people more vulnerable, and in particular increasingly susceptible to grooming and criminal exploitation through County Lines (National Youth Agency 2020; Wedlock and Melina 2020). The paper attempts to understand how front-line professionals have experienced and perceive the impact of the pandemic on their work and those they engage within the context of County Lines and child criminal exploitation
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