By Siobhan Jamieson,
London Metropolitan University.
County lines is still an emerging phenomenon which is widespread across the whole of the United Kingdom (Pitts, 2020). Due to its geographical spread and the array of offences included within county lines it has been argued by many academics that a multi-agency response is the best way to tackle it (Burt et al., 2022). Therefore, this dissertation will explore county lines and the multi-agency approach to policing it using a library-based approach consisting of secondary analysis (McCartan and Robson, 2016). This dissertation will do so by exploring county lines, the scale and impact of this type of offending, particular multi-agency responses, the effectiveness of them and any rooms for improvement. The dissertation will conclude that although multi-agency work has led to a large number of county lines being shut down, these offending groups seem to learn from this and evolve to become better (O’Hagan and Edmundson, 2021). Therefore, county lines may never fully be eradicated.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.8309829