Robert was 16-years-old when his older cousin, Grease, recruited him to work his county line, selling drugs. Grease’s original sales pitch was £500 to visit him in A-Town for a week. Robert needed the money—every 16-year-old on his estate did—so he willingly made the journey east.
One week in A-Town became two and two became four, but what makes this county lines story different is Robert was genuinely enjoying life in A-Town. He wasn’t a slave living in squalor. He was living in a real house. He’d made real friends. He was making real money. He was dressed in real designer clothes. And he had a real girlfriend—Stacy.
Robert was walking in the park one afternoon with Stacy. They stopped by the play area to chat with a few local young people. Robert was popular in A-Town. He had a reputation for being tough but fair. The girls wanted him and the boys wanted to be him.
Just off in the distance, Robert noticed a tall, lean figure approaching. He was much older than everyone else and while he looked ‘dodgy’, it was the middle of the afternoon and Robert felt safe in the company of his friends.
“Hi wee man, how is it going?”, the man said, looking at Robert.
“Aye, good mate. You?”, Robert replied.
“Yeah good. Is your name Robert yeah?”, the dodgy man asked.
“Do I know you?”, Robert asked.
“Have we met?”
“Once. You’re Grease’s boy, eh”, the man replied.
“No mate. I don’t know what you’re talking about”, Robert replied, wary about how a guy he had never met before could immediately connect him to Grease.
“I’m Jimmy”, the man said. It was one of Grease’s disgruntled customers. Little did Robert know that Grease had recently ripped him off.
Suddenly, Robert saw a flash of white in his peripheral vision followed by a blunt pain across his eye. Jimmy had punched him.
While taller and older than Robert, Jimmy’s punch was surprisingly weak. Robert retaliated, grabbing hold of Jimmy’s tracksuit top, and a brief scuffle ensued until Robert felt a sharp pain running up his cheek, from his top lip to his right ear, followed by a dizzying warm sensation.
Stacy screamed. A guttural scream.
That was the moment Robert’s stock bubble burst. All the fun in Town-A ended. Status gains were lost. No one wanted to be in his shoes now.
“He has fucking slashed you”, one of the local youths in the crowd who was watching the fight shouted. “Oh mate –”, another one chimed in, ashen-faced.
Robert immediately let Jimmy go and backed up. He put his hand to his face and felt the warmth of the blood spilling down his arm.
“What have you done?”, Robert asked in disbelief.
Jimmy just kept coming. He lifted the knife up over his head and brought it back down on Robert. The blade ripped through his sleeve and cut into his arm.
Robert turned away and ran. Thankfully, the hospital was able to stitch him back together.
Grease’s county line soon fell apart. Grease viciously attacked Jimmy to avenge Robert and he was arrested for assault. At the same time, Robert wanted out. He was healing physically but not emotionally. In his own words, “I’d had enough. Thought I would do it for a wee bit and get some money. I have a cut on my face to show for it. Having to live with it [was too much].”
Robert’s is one of many true stories I gathered in the process of researching and writing Contesting County Lines: Case Studies in Drug Crime and Deviant Entrepreneurship with colleagues Robert McLean and Carlton Brick. The book, published by Bristol University Press, is set in and around Glasgow, Scotland, long regarded as the knife crime capital of Europe, and is based on a series of interviews with county lines victims and offenders.
The book challenges some of the common myths and misconceptions about county lines drugs networks with important implications for practitioners. For example, we find that people migrate from ‘hub’ cities to ‘county’ sites not just at the direction of gang leaders, but for personal and family reasons. Crime opportunities and drug market expansion often are secondary motivations for gang proliferation and gang member migration.
We also find that the people who have some existing ties to the ‘county’ areas, like Grease in our story above, are chiefly responsible for the logistics on the ground. These people tend to be adults, not children, because children are developmentally too young and too conspicuous to engage in organized criminal activity. While some interviewees were demonstrably young, vulnerable, and exploited, many others were habitual offenders who entered county lines of their own volition, fully embracing a life of deviant entrepreneurship.
Conventional wisdom about county lines is that technology drives social change and mobile phones make drug dealing easier. While some drug dealers enthusiastically embrace the always-on culture of modern drug dealing and the use of smartphones and social media to reach customers, in our study there were drug dealers who found delivery dealing a chore – and a risk – and they only did it reluctantly to keep up with consumer demands and customer preferences.
Finally, trust in county lines is fragile, and in the end, violence or the threat of violence are often the only things keeping the gang together and the operation alive. County lines drugs networks are regulated by violence, but too much violence is bad for business, meaning that if events away in the county sites threaten the gang at home in the hub—like when Grease got arrested for assault—the gang will cut ties in the interests of self-preservation.
Such is the fallacy of ‘protection’ on the streets. Dealing drugs is potentially fraught with danger, but actions intended to protect, like carrying a knife, are liable to endanger because buyers and sellers are equally engaged in the same arms race.
Robert discovered that fame and success in the drugs game are always fleeting. When you live by the sword, you die by the sword.
Dr. James Densley is Professor and Department Chair of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Metro State University (Minnesota, USA) and co-founder and co-president of The Violence Project, a nonpartisan, nonprofit research center best known for its mass shooter database. Densley is the author of eight books, including County Lines: Case Studies in Drug Crime and Deviant Entrepreneurship.
He has published over 50 peer-reviewed articles in top scientific journals, as well as more than 100 book chapters, essays, and other works in various outlets such as The New York Times, Time magazine, USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post. His research on street gangs, criminal networks, violence, and policing has garnered global media attention. Densley earned his doctorate in sociology from the University of Oxford. In 2017, he was recognized for his outstanding community volunteerism with the Points of Light Award from the UK Prime Minister.
