County lines: A decade of destroyed young lives

0:02Jason Farrell:Sky News, the full story first.

0:08Jason Farrell:Coming up, 10 years of drugs, death and the exploitation of children. A decade on from authorities identifying the emergence of county lines gangs. Are we any closer to dealing with the dealers? Thumbtack presents Uncertainty Strikes. I was surrounded. The aisle and the options were closing in. There were paint rollers, satin and matte finish, angle brushes and natural bristles. There were too many choices. What if I never got my living room painted? What if I couldn't figure out what type of paint to use? What if I just used Thumbtack? I can hire a top-rated pro that knows everything about interior paint, easily compare prices and read reviews.

0:48Jason Farrell:Thumbtack knows homes. Download the app today. How does a banana trigger a CIA-backed coup? Do AirPods herald the arrival of a new global order? What do LED lights say about the future of humanity? I'm Ed Conway, and in each episode of my new podcast, Stuff Matters, I take an object, crack it open, and reveal the world-shaping forces hidden inside. This is economics told through the things we think we understand. Search Stuff Matters on your podcast app to listen and follow.

1:25Ollie said to his dad, Stuart, no, they don't want the money, dad.

1:30Jason Farrell:They want me to go so they can stab me. Countyline's drug gangs continue to destroy lives and communities, 10 years on from police first identifying them as a problem. And the children exploited by the dealers are now often in prison, sectioned with mental health problems, or even dead. There seems not a corner of the country immune to the trade, but unless it's happening on your doorstep, You might not fully understand how these gangs operate and the control they have over these often vulnerable kids. Our home editor Jason Farrell has been following the story for the best part of a decade and he's back on the podcast.

2:02Jason Farrell:Jason, great to have you back. Let's start with where this all began. Ten years ago, how did we first learn about this phenomenon, the county lines gangs? Well, I've got it here, actually. The National Crime Agency in August 2015 came out with a report that said they have identified a growing body of intelligence that vulnerable young people are being exploited in order to facilitate the running of street level dealing. And it added county lines is a national issue involving the use of mobile phone lines by groups to extend their drug dealing business to new locations outside of their home areas.

2:37So the central idea was that you take your business elsewhere using phone lines, WhatsApp groups, that sort of thing. So it's the appification, the uberification, if you like, of drug selling. So you're using technology more, but at the centre of it, also young people as your runners.

2:55Jason Farrell:We are talking about kind of large criminal gangs, organised criminal gangs in presumably cities. What, diversifying their operation? We always used to talk about the postcode wars in London, didn't we? And I think what happened was suddenly they thought we're on each other's toes in London. Why don't we extend our businesses out to other places? It's not like it wasn't happening before to an extent. But I think it just became more web-like, more advanced, so that you would get people in the big cities like Manchester and London, Birmingham, saying, I don't know, why don't we go to Reading or Colchester or even somewhere smaller?

3:28I spoke to one mother who lived in a small village outside of Harrogate and her son had got involved by being recruited at a skateboarding park, literally in a tiny village. And I've spoken to mothers in Gloucestershire, on the south coast, you know, where you wouldn't expect there to be like an organised drug gang. It might be a local dealer. And that's what the police who worked for the NCA at that time said. What's happening is your local drug dealer is actually being pushed out by these more ruthless gangs who are bringing drugs and sort of teenage warfare into these areas.

4:06Jason Farrell:Because often those local drug dealers that you're talking about, they would be users themselves dealing to fund their own habit. The one I looked into a while back was called the Castro Line. It was actually the first time that police identified this happening. It was in Lincoln. You know, not famous for that kind of thing. famous cathedrals and stuff like that. But it's actually, in the world of policing, it's quite a famous case because it was the first time they actually prosecuted someone under the Modern Slavery Act for enslaving children from Birmingham to go and sell these drugs. How do they use, the kids, how do they use these children to ply the train?

4:37Well, I mean, they obviously have to be relatively, well, very vulnerable children. You know, children who are perhaps living in homes or in broken homes because they go missing. and actually with the Castro line it was parents, concerned parents saying my child's gone missing that led to him being shut down. But they will literally put them up, take them away from their home and when you think about the gang structure as it used to be, people used to talk about being protected in their area and how the gang was a form of protection. This is the opposite because it's actually saying to the children we're taking you out of your area, we're not going to protect you, we're going to stick you in a house with drug users and you are going to be the contact to hand over the drugs.

5:15These kids were used because they were cheap, they were exploitable, and they were dispensable as well.

5:20Jason Farrell:It sounds like there must have been a degree of grooming involved, or at the very least bribery to get them involved in the first place. It's the free trainers, it's food, it might be a bike. All of these things actually help the drug dealers. If we give you a bike, you can go around town on the bike to deliver drugs. If we give you a coat, you can stay out for longer, but you've got a nice coat. The trainers, again, it's actually useful to the drug dealers, but it also looks like a free gift. And actually what sometimes ends up happening is they say, well, now you owe us for that. But it's OK if you sell this many drugs.

5:51We'll take that as payment. And another thing we found with young people was often if they did these drug runs, we met one girl who did a run to Southampton. She gets there. She gets robbed of the drugs. And then she goes back and she has to say to the boss, I'm really sorry. I've lost the drugs. And she actually got stabbed by the boss. And it later emerged that it was his gang that stole the drugs off her. because, of course, now she's got to work for them to pay off the debt that she supposedly lost. So it's a debt-bonding scam that's being used on the kids. And, I mean, these are really, really vulnerable kids.

6:22This is a tragic story of this young woman. She was raped as well by the gang. She was pregnant by the age of 14. I actually caught up with her very recently. She was utterly traumatised by what happened to her. She's had psychosis. She was sectioned in later life. She's still living in a refuge. These are long-term impacts, And that's one of the reasons why I return to this is because 10 years on, we can see the impact this is having on all these young people.

6:45Jason Farrell:We have this image of drug gangs operating on their own turf for an organisation to head out of town into passengers new. It suggests that there's quite a bit of money to be made here. I mean, there is an awful lot of money to be made. They're making millions on a line. The industry in itself, you know, is worth an awful lot of money. And if you think that this year there were over 1 ,000 gang leaders who were arrested by the police and over 2 ,000 lines were closed down, these are multiple, multiple lines that people are setting up around the country and there's an awful lot of money to be made.

7:20Jason Farrell:That suggests that there can't be a part of the country into which these gangs haven't spread. The thing is, we think of them as, you know, big structural gangs and sometimes they're not. Sometimes there might be a guy who's getting stuff shipped up to Ipswich and he might have his own sub-line that he's running into Colchester. It's like a web of lines that people are running from different places. Anywhere where you can make money from this, people will go. So a package goes from, let's say, London to somewhere outside the M25. Just walk me through how they let people know that they're there.

7:52Well, there's two parts. There's creating your community. So you go out, you go on an expedition. when someone who's actually done this talked me through it. You find users, which is not that difficult to find if you know where to go, and then you use their contacts and you build up your contact list and you say, we're coming in with a product. They might what's called cuckoo a house, so they'll take over someone's house. This is a vulnerable person often, and that will become their locale. And then I actually travelled up once with a mother who was doing this for her son because her son had convinced her that it was safer for him if she did it, who would carry a package up to the trap house and then there would be young people living in that trap house who would then cut up the drugs, package the drugs and sell them.

8:38Jason Farrell:Is it possible to police this over the course of the past 10 years? Has the policing of this improved at all? Well, they have. Back in 2019, they set up a central unit to try and tackle this. They did actually arrest over 1 ,000 gang leaders, they called them, and also they have to figure out who is being exploited and I think there were over 3 ,000 people last year who they then referred for help who were either children or vulnerable people who are being exploited by the gang. I remember when Priti Patel came in as Home Secretary saying we need to cut off the head of the snake which was actually an expression that a drug dealer used to me once saying that there's no point going after the guys on the ground you need to get higher up.

9:18and there have been examples of kingpins being arrested. I've seen examples of quite high-end guys who have been caught but that's obviously the prize. You're going after the big guys who are running it and that takes a lot of time and resources and I'm afraid, you know, the fact is that the fact that they have actually arrested that many people and closed that many lives this year shows that it's still a problem, unfortunately.

9:45Jason Farrell:We've mentioned it already but for a lot of these young people, unfortunately, their time in the county line as gangs ends in significant violence or even death. Yeah, I was talking to this mother, Amanda Stephens, and her son was killed. He'd been one of those people who'd been set up by his own gang and had been robbed at one point. He was killed by very young people as well. He was only 13. One 13-year-old girl who I know her brother was also involved and he was 10. And it's often that kind of transition period from primary school to secondary school It's really difficult because they're trying to fit in.

10:18And both the mothers I spoke to in this last report said that that was the period when it happened. And I think that's a really, really vulnerable time for children when they're going from primary to secondary school. And that's often when they do get sucked in. Those kids that have managed to get out, how have they managed to do that? I think it is really difficult. The reason I went back to this story is because I was working on other stories about mental health, about housing, about homelessness. and a lot of times I find that the people who are in those situations, they've had some kind of contact with county lines and I think it is really hard to get out of it and it probably is just partly just growing up but by the time they've grown up, by the time they've got out of it, they've got all these other problems.

10:58They might have a drug addiction themselves or an alcohol addiction. I've met very few people, I mean, unless they're working as mentors and they've found a way, but people who've been really caught up in it, I find very few of them have come out unscathed.

11:12Jason Farrell:How can parents keep an eye out for this? What are the warning signs, even early warning signs, if there are any? Well, I think that sort of sense of loss of control. I mean, I remember one mother telling me that she felt like her son had been radicalised. At one point he got a text and he got out of the car while it was still moving. And she said it was like he was on remote control. Obviously secrecy, obviously where your child is not where they said they were going to be and you can see on a tracker or something like that. Different group of friends. and then I guess, yes, the obvious one is like, have they suddenly got a new pair of trainers that you didn't buy for them or a new coat or a new bike?

11:48But gosh, I know parents who've spotted all the signs and still find it really, really difficult to get their kids out of it.

11:54Jason Farrell:Jason, I mean, you've been covering this story for the best part of a decade. How have the county line gangs evolved over that period? Well, I think firstly, for the policing of it, we have better understood that the children are being exploited rather than viewing them as criminals. And I think, you know, the modern slavery legislation wasn't directly pointed at county lines. And now there is legislation around the exploitation of children coming in. There's new legislation around forcing children to internally take drugs into their bodies, which is called plugging. That horrific practice is being outlawed.

12:26And there is legislation around cuckooing as well, where gangs take over properties that's coming in. I think in terms of the gangs themselves, just technology is where it's at. The better the technology, obviously it's easy to track people now on Snapchat, big WhatsApp groups. It's easier to set up. So it's just become much easier for them to create these communities quickly in towns and cities that they may not be familiar with. People want drugs.

12:52Jason Farrell:I mean, that is clear. For these gangs to be able to set up in a random town up and down the country, there is a market that already exists. whilst that market persists I mean there's no chance of doing away with county lines gangs is there? I think you know at the moment we've stopped talking about county lines it hasn't really been in the media much at all and I think the reason for that is people aren't angry about it people can get angry about the budget or they can get angry about small boats or grooming gangs but actually these young people are kind of easy to forget and yet there are hundreds, nay thousands of them being exploited and having their lives ruined.

13:31And we're not angry about it. And it needs to get back into the public perception that this is still a problem. I even thought it must have stopped until I saw the figures. 3 ,000 people last year, young people who've been exploited. And that's the ones they got to, you know. And there are many more that they haven't got to, I'm sure. There are, of course, children's charities who are aware of this. There are the police who are still doing their job. and there are politicians who still campaign on it. I just don't think it's quite getting the bandwidth that it used to get, but it has not gone away.

14:04And if anything, based on those figures, it's actually slightly worse than it was, say, three or four years ago.

14:11Jason Farrell:Jason, many thanks. And you can see Jason's report over on the website, scannews.com. The Daily is back again tomorrow.

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15:06Jason Farrell:I'm Ed Conway, and in each episode of my new podcast, Stuff Matters, I take an object, crack it open, and reveal the world-shaping forces hidden inside. This is economics told through the things we think we understand. Search Stuff Matters on your podcast app to listen and follow.