County Lines changing to a more localised business model, report shows

It found County Lines is now a “higher risk enterprise” for those criminals’ intent on controlling lines.

While external lines (which cross a force boundary) have reduced by 12.2 per cent, internal lines (which start and end within a force boundary) have increased by 232 per cent, year-on-year. This represents “a shift from a traditional County Lines business model to one that is more local,” says the latest County Lines Strategic Threat Risk Assessment.

Released by the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) County Lines and Gangs alongside the National County Lines Coordination Centre (NCLCC) on Wednesday (November 5) it covers the period from April 2023 to March 2024.

During this period, more adults and fewer children have been recorded by the police as having County Lines involvement, in any role (including victim or perpetrator).

Despite this trend, the County Lines business model continues to involve child criminal exploitation, as well as child sexual exploitation, says the NPCC.

It adds: “Children going missing is a fundamental feature, where they are trafficked to work on drug lines at the sharp end, as drug runners transporting and selling drugs directly to users.

“This puts them in the most dangerous role within the supply chain, possessing valuable cash and commodity that other criminals may seek to steal, and with potential for violent conflict linked to the drugs operations, particularly over territory.”

Commander Paul Brogden, NPCC lead for County Lines, said: “Our highly successful County Lines programme, coordinated by the NCLCC, has built strong collaborations across police forces resulting in significant numbers of arrests and charges, County Line closures, large quantities of drugs seized, weapons including knives and firearms recovered, and the disruption and dismantling of organised criminal groups.

“Ultimately, as a result of our continued policing pressure making County Lines a high risk enterprise, we are seeing changes in the way County Lines operate, with offenders moving away from running cross-border drug lines to a more localised business model, within their areas.

“Whilst we have seen this change, we have also developed better understanding and improved our reporting and detection around how County Lines operate, which has revealed around 6,600 active lines operating last year.”

The assessment found organised crime groups (OCGs) operating in a County Lines context were overwhelmingly recorded as British (91.3 per cent).

For all regions (except London) the greatest proportion of individuals were of white ethnicity. However, in all regions, individuals of black ethnicity, where recorded, were over-represented in comparison with the regional population data. Nationally, 65.7 per cent individuals are of white ethnicity, 22.3 per cent black, 10.5 per cent Asian and 1.5 per cent other (including mixed).

Crack cocaine and heroin is rarely available for sale on social media accounts advertising drugs for sale, and instead continues to dominate the traditional County Lines market, offered for retail supply on-street, via burner or ‘graft’ phones.

In July the NCLCC launched the Disrupting County Lines Policing Strategy 2024 to 2027 which aims to:

• Prevent people engaging in County Lines, and the associated violence and exploitation;
• Proactively safeguard children and vulnerable adults from harm;
• Better prepare communities by building resilience against the harms of County Lines; and
• Relentlessly pursue offenders, including OCGs, urban street gangs and individuals running County Lines.

The 4P approach within the strategy focuses on prioritising the prevention of people becoming involved in County Lines and protecting people.

Missing episodes are a key indicator of vulnerability to child criminal exploitation on County Lines, says the NPCC. It is estimated 1,900 children went missing in 2021/22 specifically due to County Lines.

It adds: “County Lines has disproportionately impacted the black community, therefore it is vital that using specialist resources, such as our County Lines Programme Taskforce’s, we proactively rescue children who are reported missing and at high-risk of serious harm.

“Working in partnership with specialist support providers such as Catch22, Missing Persons SafeCall and Barnardo’s, we can better protect those children from serious harm, prevent future missing episodes and gather evidence to identify and prosecute the perpetrators of child exploitation.”

The NPCC says “relentless and robust action” to bring down County Lines gangs is part of policing’s strategic objective in breaking the model used by the organised criminals and protecting vulnerable people who are being exploited by them.

Since the set up in 2018 of the NCLCC, it has been able to develop the national intelligence picture for County Lines and helped police forces improve recording around the threat of County Lines, increase collaboration across policing areas and develop a fuller picture of the threats faced nationally.

Commander Brogden said: “One of our priorities has been to enable police officers to recognise the signs of exploitation when encountering young people involved in County Lines so that they are able to safeguard those being exploited via these violent criminal gangs.

“Identifying potential indicators of vulnerability at an early stage gives policing the opportunity for early intervention, which could mean a referral to statutory and/or specialist support provision.

“The demographic data shows us that County Lines are affecting the black community disproportionately, who are over-represented as both offenders and victims (when compared with census data) in all regions, and we must continue to do all we can to reduce and remove this disparity.

“We continue to push for further improvements in the way we safeguard individuals so that less children are been drawn into this coercive criminal business model.

“We know the County Lines drugs supply business model continues to exploit children and vulnerable adults, so we must continue working across the country to effectively tackle this cross-border crime.

“County Lines drug dealing destroys lives, and we are committed to stopping the supply of illegal drugs, and the exploitation and violence that is frequently associated with it.

“Our message is clear to anyone running county lines across the country; we will be relentless in our pursuit of you, we will shut down your county lines, we will take drugs off our streets and we will rescue those who are being exploited by you.”

The County Lines Strategic Threat Risk Assessment shows that:

• Three in every four County Lines offenders (76.5 per cent) have one or more previous arrests for offences of violence and/or the possession of weapons;
• Child criminal exploitation on County Lines remains a significant risk, with 2,888 (22 per cent of total) children recorded as having County Lines involvement (victim or perpetrator) between April 2023 to March 2024, down from 3,216 (26 per cent of total) the previous year;
• There are 1,447 OCGs linked to County Lines this year, with the numbers of new OCGs and individuals linked remaining steady;
• With continued improvements in recording practices and understanding, across policing, a higher number of lines (6,644) were recorded in the last year (2023-24). This number was 4,007 in 2022/23.
• The overall drugs threat has increased, with greater availability of cocaine and heroin, high production levels for cocaine and the emergence of powerful synthetic opioids such as nitazenes; and
• County Lines OCGs drug activity is predominantly crack cocaine and heroin supply, with 87 per cent of external drug lines supplying these drugs.

Minister for Crime and Policing, Dame Diana Johnson said: “County lines activity is some of the most violent and exploitative criminality which fractures communities and ruins lives. We must stop these gangs from luring young people into this dangerous world.

“This report shows police progress in tackling the national county lines threat, but highlights the need to aggressively pursue every gang, in every neighbourhood.

“We will strengthen the law to prevent young people from being drawn into crime and stop gangs exploiting children, leaving no community behind in our efforts to eradicate this awful activity.”