What is your understanding of ‘County Lines’

[ScarletWitchM]

I’ve read and heard different definitions of what ‘County Lines’ is.

what is it you think / believe/ understand County Lines to mean?

Children being used to deal drugs. Actually, I mean more like ‘being used in the dealing of drugs’, as the poster below says.

Its the use and explotation of young adolecents and children to transport and deliver drugs accross the country.

They get sucked in....then they are stuck and can't get out

They get caught...arrested...prison

Young lives then ruined

What are the other definitions?

There was a thread that asked this a while ago. Why are you asking, OP?

I’ve read it as the phone line drug dealers use (the county phone line)

young people being recruited to sell on the above line

grooming young people to sell drugs in other counties (crossing county boarder/line) where they won’t be known by police

maybe it’s all the above?

County lines = exploitation of vulnerable people.

I think it’s none of those. Maybe the third up to a point. Just google and see.

Trying to understand if it’s just about young people being groomed into dealing where they live or if it’s more about getting them to go to other counties to not get caught

Too many police in big cities, fair bit of money / drug use in rural locations. Get a few kids who want to make some money and don’t have much adult supervision after school etc and use them to hide / deal drugs.
We live in a rural area that while affluent also has a number of poorer families. Country lines is a definite thing here and those from the poorer families are targeted first and foremost and (some of) the middle class parents are the ones they deliver to 😕

Didn't RTFT. Networks for distributing drugs that particularly use young people (age 11-19) as distributors or couriers.

Young people are attractive 'business' partners because they get seduced by the money, are easier to intimidate & control, don't have a criminal record yet so under the radar, seem 'nice' so can recruit new customers.

They go to places/towns out of area

Never on their own doorstep

Google says “County Lines is where illegal drugs are transported from one area to another, often across police and local authority boundaries (although not exclusively), usually by children or vulnerable people who are coerced into it by gangs. The 'County Line' is the mobile phone line used to take the orders of drugs.”

Bit if you really need to know then you probably need to speak to someone more informed.

It’s all of them.

It's a line as in network, not phone line. Dealers based in cities, using vulnerable kids to go out to the county towns and sell/collect money, so that they can protect their own identity and not get caught.

There is a documentary about it on the 4 online or maybe it was BBC iplayer. You can watch that to see how it works.

But it's definitely both - dealing where they live if the YP lives rurally, getting the YP to go out on the train etc if they live in the city.

Thanks everyone. I did do a Google first - there were a few different reasons they gave so just trying to clarify.

apologies if it’s been asked lots before - I tried to search MN but couldn’t find the answer.

For context I’m asking as I’m concerned about a friends kid who might be being ‘groomed’ into this and wanted to be able to explain to her the risks and what County Lines is by definition

The words “county lines” do definitely refer to the phone line the users call, then the kids know who to supply to.
I always thought the name referred to them county lines, until I heard a podcast with a police officer explaining it. I think it remains a common misconception.

The kid in Hastings?

Yes, how did you guess?

If you need help OP i work in this area.

I have a young family member who has just come out of prison after being involved in county lines.

He was driving, illegally as he had no driving license, drugs from a major U.K. city out to a naice market town.

There are usually young people used to move drugs about from big cities to smaller towns. Very often gang involvement.
Sometimes they will take over the house of someone who is unable to stop them due to mental illness or mental disability. This is called cuckooing. Or they might take over an empty house, which they call a bando.

Young people are recruited by plying them with gifts and money. Teen girls are sometimes used to smuggle the drugs by inserting the capsule in a kinder surprise internally.

Thanks, I think it’s common perception that it’s about sending kids to other places. Im concerned my friend’s son is doing this already but she said he hasn’t left the area so can’t be

See if the local police force is doing any info sessions about it.

The school my son attends is in a quite rural location, and the police collaborated with the school and SS to run an online Zoom session for parents, explaining what it is, the signs to look out for etc