05 Nov 2024
County Lines is a higher risk enterprise for those criminals’ intent on controlling lines.
The National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) County Lines and Gangs alongside the National County Lines Coordination Centre (NCLCC) have today (5/11) released the County Lines Strategic Threat Risk Assessment covering the period from April 2023 to March 2024.
Key findings within the assessment reveal that:
Furthermore:
In July the NCLCC launched the Disrupting County Lines Policing Strategy 2024 to 2027 which aims to:
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. It is estimated 1,900 children went missing in 2021/22 specifically due to County Lines. 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.
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 Paul Brogden, NPCC lead for County Lines, 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.
“Our highly successful County Lines programme, coordinated by the National County Lines Coordination Centre (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 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:
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.”
[1] From a representative sample of 2,577 nominals charged via County Lines Programme activity with drugs supply offences (in FY 2022–23).
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