This chapter will consider why and then how county lines drug supply networks began to emerge in provincial towns across the UK. It also sets out several pre-conditions (variables) which, once ripened, led to the creation of county lines drug supply networks as we now know them.

Theory of change: creating the conditions for emergent county lines

It is acknowledged that the supply of Class A drugs from urban centres to provincial/rural towns has been taking place over many years and long before the current rash of headlines citing county lines. This traditional model (or Pre-County Lines model) is illustrated in Table 2.2.

Notwithstanding this traditional model, the emergence of county lines, as we currently understand them, has its origin in a series of push/pull factors. It is useful to analyse them to illustrate how cumulatively they have created the conditions leading to county lines. More specifically how these conditions present as a challenge/problem to which working county lines is deemed the effective solution. These conditions now establish themselves in London (and other metropolitan centres) acting as push factors, while the conditions operating in host locations act as pull factors. Table 2.1 illustrates visually how these factors are grouped. Each factor acts as a variable which may/may not occur in certain metropolitan locations. In London each variable is readily identifiable and subjected to analysis and research permitting a degree of verification.

These push/pull factors operate as a series of event variables occurring over time (with time also an extant variable).

Evolution of London urban street gangs (USGs)

As heralded by the most recent and informative key UK academic works on urban street gangs, Reluctant Gangsters (Pitts, 2008), How Gangs Work (Densley, 2013) and The Street Casino (Harding, 2014), UK street gangs have been rapidly evolving, with the number of USGs increasing and the volume of gang-active participants similarly increasing. Gang-affiliates have become younger (Harding, 2014) with USGs increasingly focussed on instrumental rather than expressive crime (Whittaker et al, 2019). In Bourdieusian (1984; 1986) terms, this signifies a change in the settlement of the social field of USGs. In fact, multiple changes have occurred, leading to significant alterations within this social field.