Exploring County Lines: Criminal Drug Distribution Practices in Scotland
| Date | 01 April 2020 |
| DOI | 10.1177/1473225420902850 |
| Author | Richard McHugh,Robert McLean,Chris Holligan |
| Published date | 01 April 2020 |
| Subject Matter | Special Issue Articles |
902850YJJ0010.1177/1473225420902850Youth JusticeHolligan et al.
research-article2020
Special Issue Article
Youth Justice
2020, Vol. 20(1-2) 50 –63
Exploring County Lines:
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Criminal Drug Distribution
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https://doi.org/10.1177/1473225420902850
DOI: 10.1177/1473225420902850
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Practices in Scotland
Chris Holligan , Robert McLean
and Richard McHugh
Abstract
The concept of ‘County Lines’ denotes an exploitative type of illegal drug distribution and dealing criminal
enterprise that is indicative of the development of new strategies to underpin criminal markets in Britain.
It is a growing phenomenon characterizing the evolution and working of drug distribution networks in
contemporary Britain which often establish ‘nests’ in the homes of vulnerable persons domiciled within
drug traffic hubs. This article draws upon qualitative data generated from interviews with active and former
offenders and members of intervention agencies in order to understand more about the denizens of this
embryonic criminal world.
Keywords
County Lines, cuckooing, drug supply, gangs, Glasgow, organized crime, Scotland, youths
Introduction
Scotland has an acute illegal drugs problem, which intersects with organized crime (OC)
and criminogenic environmental conditions where the agency of those involved is con-
strained by cultural and situational contexts (Dickenson and Wright, 2015). Illicit drug
usage and criminal supply networks are both concentrated and diffuse (Scottish
Government, 2008, 2015), with high rates of violence and intimidation defining the cul-
ture of drug markets, including ‘County Lines’ (McDonald, 2018; National Crime Agency
(NCA), 2017; Stone, 2018). Police and government agencies describe ‘County Lines’ as
the contemporary drug dealing practices of criminal gangs migrating their business to
environs lying outside of the main urban conurbations (HM Government, 2016; NCA,
2017) through the coercive use of children and teenagers doing the grunt work of the drug
mule, trafficking Class A drugs (crack, cocaine, heroin) into rural areas.1
Corresponding author:
Robert McLean, School of Education and Social Science, University of the West of Scotland, High Street, Paisley, Scotland.
Email: Robert.McLean@uws.ac.uk
Holligan et al.
51
This official conceptualization occludes the actual complexity of County Lines, which
to some extent pre-exists this official labelling, as illegal drugs have always been mar-
keted throughout the United Kingdom; a more accurate analysis acknowledges that there
are changes taking place in the shape and provision of illegal drug supply networks
(Coomber and Moyle, 2018). Anonymized mobile phones combined with text messaging
characterize a technologically dynamic nexus of County Line criminality. These anonymiz-
ing communication platforms help extend criminality outside export hubs, enhancing the
resilience of the criminal enterprise to detection by law enforcement agencies (NCA,
2017: 3). County Lines operatives exploit failings in the care system and recruit vulnera-
ble individuals, offering them money and a sense of belonging at a time in their lives
where feelings of rejection are likely to be oppressive and stigmatizing (Hudek, 2018). As
County Lines criminal operatives, they are exposed to violence and coercive abuse repre-
sented in a form of illegal governance famously known as ‘code of the street’ (Anderson,
1999). Victimization rates are higher for young males than their demographic counter-
parts; vulnerability is intensified for youths living in neighbourhoods accustomed to vio-
lent gang activity and codes of informal policing (Foley et al., 2013).
This empirical study explores County Lines in Scotland (NCA, 2017). Drugs-associated
crime in Scotland is among the highest in the world. There are an estimated 200,000 prob-
lematic drug users, 600,000 recreational drug users and 40,000 to 60,000 children affected
by parental drug abuse misuse (Casey et al., 2009). Densley et al. (2018) found that drug
supply in Scotland had developed significantly over the previous 10 years: Organized
Crime Groups (OCGs) in the country were, until recently, restricted, extended-family oper-
ations around Glasgow, where access to the ‘higher echelons’ of the criminal underworld
was controlled by esteemed criminal individuals with authority to grant entry to this illicit
trading. The trafficking of vulnerable, sometimes homeless, children and youths to conduct
drug sales in areas beyond their hometowns is a new development to which child welfare
bodies are alert, estimating 4000 children in London are implicated (Children’s Society,
2018; Stone, 2018). The Scottish National Party pledged to make Scotland ‘drug free’ by
2019 (Scottish Government, 2008). To achieve this ambitious objective, the Scottish
Government’s (2015) Serious Organized Crime Strategy (SSOCS) focuses on dismantling
criminal drug supply networks. Police Scotland estimate over 160 domestic OCGs, includ-
ing those involved in high-level OC and drugs distribution (mostly centrally situated in the
West of Scotland). However, as Jock Young (2004) recommends, we should be cautious
about the ‘numbers game’ of this orthodox representation of criminality and the OCGs.
Young argues that it is inherently difficult to categorize criminality through a lens of
‘scientific truth’. The reality of crime is messier and more fluid; ‘liquid’ conditions are
emerging as characteristic of County Lines, including its flexible cuckooing practices of
exploitation by heroin and crack cocaine dealers of local populations, especially in areas
with known populations of drug addicts (Coomber and Moyle, 2018; Spicer et al., 2019).
OCGs and County Lines
Academics and law enforcement authorities conceptualize the UK drugs market as a
hierarchical pyramid. This pyramid is compartmentalized: international, wholesale and
52
Youth Justice 20(1-2)
retail-level distribution (Matrix Knowledge Group, 2007). Markets are further differenti-
ated as open, semi-open or closed trust-based markets (May and Hough, 2004). The way
drugs are distributed tends to correspond to the level at which actors operate through the
pyramid. Most of the actual drug transaction though occurs at the lower end of the mar-
ket, in communities, often by non-gang-affiliated social dealers operating in friendship
networks. Yet, commercially motivated ‘proper dealers’, the focus of the current study,
are more likely to be organized into associational criminal structures, small criminal
groups or gangs, for whom engagement in illicit enterprise is integral to a collective
identity (Densley et al., 2018; Pearson and Hobbs, 2001). To support their commuting to
provincial markets, often these criminal groups commandeer the homes of vulnerable
individuals such as adults with mental health problems or disabilities, those with little
support networks or drug addicts (Spicer et al., 2019). These ‘cuckooed’ homes are then
used as operational bases from which young recruits can be sent back and forth, at times
staying on site for a number of weeks to sell drugs, oversee money deposits or even
weapon storage (Briggs, 2010; Coomber and Moyle, 2017; Spicer et al., 2019). Customers
are contacted via a single Deal Line (DL), with promotions or limited offers being adver-
tised through aggressive text messaging as an incentive to entice customers, even loyalty
cards are offered in some cases. Stone (2018) describes a 21-year-old Birmingham man
sentenced to 14 years imprisonment for trafficking vulnerable children aged 14 to 15 to
conduct drug deals from a squalid flat inhabited by heroin users located in Lincoln,
100 miles distant. Some County Lines dealers may ‘holiday’ in host towns overnight, or
just undertake a working day, then return to the hub location, and not necessarily as gang
members (Coomber and Moyle, 2018: 1324). Although diversity existed in terms of how
cuckooing was conducted, it consistently allowed out-of-area groups to remain around
the clock in new markets, and while some victims saw it more as ‘renting’ their place,
with the passage of time harm arose (Coomber and Moyle, 2018: 1337). County Lines
are linked by official sources to increasing knife crime and homicides in rural communi-
ties (HM Government, 2016; McLean et al., 2018b).
McLean et al. (2019) suggest that while numerous factors play a part in this process,
much of the knife crime can be related to urban gangs fighting proxy wars in distant com-
munities. In some British cites, the demise of employment opportunities and weakening
of community cohesion will trigger strain that may surface in recourse to the use of vio-
lence as a form of street capital enabling criminal governance. Local youths may also
respond to the fear of crime by carrying weapons for status and protection (Holligan et al.,
2017). Without the availability of recourse to the legal system, grievances and personal
slights arising in criminal networks are resolved through codes of violent retribution and
notions of natural justice (Coomber and Moyle, 2017; Densley, 2013). Exploitation is
central to County Lines drug distribution and is facilitated by vulnerability associated
with the effects of alcohol or substance dependencies, vulnerable single mothers and the
elderly (Spicer et al., 2019). A source of the vulnerability of ‘privileged’ youth is grounded
in complex pressures...
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