Government officials use county lines as a term to describe “gangs and organised criminal networks involved in exporting illegal drugs into one or more importing areas within the UK”. The Home Office began outlining attempts to tackle county lines in 2017, and a detailed programme unveiled four years ago has led to more than 14,800 arrests and another 7,200 individuals being referred by police to safeguarding initiatives. Wroe, assistant professor in the sociology department at Durham University, added: “The government throws these issues into the spotlight in an attempt to ramp up support for policies that are tough on crime and tough on immigration, while it fails to address the entrenched inequalities it has created over the last decade.” Lauren Wroe, one of the study’s authors, said: “While we don’t see enough action from government on child poverty – itself partly the result of austerity politics – we have witnessed rampant campaigns against so-called grooming gangs, child traffickers and now county lines gangs.” “We need to ensure that they are not complicit in a new form of criminalisation of Black and minority ethnic children, particularly those excluded from school, and/or in care,” she said. She urged them to urgently review procedures and databases. The IRR’s director, Liz Fekete, said the research should serve as a “wake-up call” to councils and safeguarding officials about the perils of being drawn into racial profiling. A national child safeguarding review panel also identified a concerning “over-representation” of Black boys in those considered at risk from county lines. The research, published this week in the journal Race & Class, adds that young Black people are up to six times more likely than any other ethnicity to be included in county lines safeguarding classifications. However, available data indicates that, by 2020, of 3,290 people “having a link or suspected link” to county lines in London, 83% belonged to an ethnic minority. The IRR tried to identify the ethnicity of people considered “at risk” of involvement in county lines by the Met, but said its freedom of information request had not been answered. Niamh Eastwood, executive director of drugs charity Release, said the study highlighted growing concerns about the strategy: “The county lines narrative has been used by government and police as a contrived new threat that falsely and cruelly legitimises the targeting of racialised communities, especially of young Black children and men.” “There is a dearth of evidence to support the contention of an increase in the use and supply of drugs as a result of ‘county lines’,” said the IRR study. The findings, published by thinktank the Institute of Race Relations (IRR), says the government’s claim that county lines is the “most violent and exploitative” drugs distribution model, requiring a multi-agency approach, is unproven.
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