Sociological and Economic Causes of ‘County Lines’ Drug Dealing.

By George Donaghey,

London Metropolitan University.

This paper is an amalgamation of historical and contemporary criminological theory, with the aim of creating connections throughout time periods to define the causes of county lines in both a sociological and economic context. Taking the nurture side of Nature vs Nurture discussions, both peer and environmental interactions shape a person into a deviant being; they are who their social and ecological environment is. If these individuals are surrounded by economic deprivation, the strain (to achieve financial success) they experience is accentuated by a lack of opportunity. County lines is proved here to be that escape from poverty: a business model built out of exploitation and the manipulation of an individual’s introspective moral code, which has now been displaced by the deinstitutionalisation of migration and isolation. Even looking at labelling theories in a historical context, impoverished people have never been encouraged to be conformists to common law. They are instead inspired to take life by the reins, and manipulate their national environment for their own financial gain, with complete disregard to human rights and modern slavery legislation, and to fight against social norms that have hindered them. Clamping down on these regulations and encouraging multi-agency work to prevent the exploitation of children, would create a better policing framework to tackle county lines at a national scale. This would fix legislative problems, but not the true cause: disproportionate, relative deprivation. It is clear that redistribution of wealth and greater support for those experiencing poverty would practically eliminate the need to deviate into county lines. This would stop child exploitation in organised crime groups, and alleviate the population of a growing drug use and distribution epidemic.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.16911487

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