Abstract

County Line Drug Networks involve the transportation of drugs from urban hubs to out of city locations across the UK. County lines are a societal concern as they involve the recruitment of vulnerable individuals (adults and children), who are used as runners, exposing them to hazardous and often violent situations. This paper reports on a small scale study which provides a snapshot of the characteristics of nominals involved in county line drug network within a London Borough as well as the perspective of three expert practitioners who have substantial and detailed operational knowledge of how county line operatives work.

Highlights

  • Tackling county lines is one of six key priorities within the UK Government’s approach to Ending Gang Violence and Exploitation (Home Office Drugs Strategy, 2017)

  • This study adds to existing empirical knowledge by drawing on quantitative data and interviews with three expert practitioners, exploring who is involved in county line activities, why they are involved and how they are being responded to from the perspective of Springtide, a London Borough beset with the multitudinous problem of being a significant exporter of county line drug networks. This mixed methods study draws on the authorised use of empirical data that captures a snapshot of county line drug networks from the perspective of a London Borough and is triangulated with the experiences of three expert practitioners working in the same Borough, to address the following research questions: 1. What does the data collected in this study reveal about those involved in Springtide’s county line drug networks?

  • There are some similarities with gangs in terms of age profile, but while gang membership within Springtide is lower than county line association, the proportion of young people in gangs is slightly higher

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Summary

Introduction

Tackling county lines is one of six key priorities within the UK Government’s approach to Ending Gang Violence and Exploitation (Home Office Drugs Strategy, 2017). A relatively recent phenomenon the term ‘county lines’ is firmly established within police and public vernacular, with a growing understanding of how county line drug networks operate emerging through nationally collated police data (NCA, 2015, 2017, 2019), with over 2,000 individual deal line numbers across the UK, linked to approximately 1,000 branded county lines identified (National Crime Agency, 2019) Explanations for this rapid rise include the transformation of local drug markets, demand for product, the absence of an organised drug economy, the demise of traditional criminal structures, a lesser police presence and a more diverse mix of younger, socially-based, profit-driven, criminal groupings, competing for profits (Coomber and Moyle, 2017, Robinson et al, 2018). The overlap/competition between gangs and county line drug networks ( referred to as CLDNs) and the fundamental principle underpinning county lines, the movement between urban and county locations, results in violence which occurs when ‘business’ interests, those tied to the drug trade, are threatened (Storrod and Densely, 2016; Spicer, 2018), this violence and conflict often played out on Youtube and other social media platforms (Andelll and Pitts, 2018; Storrod and Densley, 2016)

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