Next, a look at some of the major challenges police forces in Wales (and the UK more generally) continue to face or have had to adapt to more recently.
“County Lines” has been one of the most serious threats from organised crime in Wales for the last decade.
“County Lines” are the supply chains by which drugs are transported and distributed from the major English cities to smaller provincial towns and cities elsewhere in the UK, usually via a single controlled phone line or point of contact.
This has always been a problem in some parts of Wales, but drug dealers and gangs have increasingly used more aggressive tactics such as “cuckooing” (dealers forcing their way onto a property and using it as a local base of operations, possibly as a form of debt bondage); recruitment of vulnerable children as drug mules (probably because they’re less likely to raise suspicion); an increase in violence in areas where the drugs are distributed and sold.
County Lines networks have proven to be stubborn to break down. Even during the Covid-19 pandemic, dealers and drug gangs changed their tactics to adapt to the situation3.
This included switching from rail travel to private hire vehicles, use of disguises to get around restrictions (i.e. delivery drivers), increased use of private social networking and targeting non-stereotypical people to become traffickers and dealers (i.e. university students and affluent children).
Lockdown restrictions did negatively impact County Lines too – movements became easier to track and identify – but it was still whim to pandemic restrictions and the dampening effect wasn’t long-lasting.
There’s also the wider debate on drugs policy and its impact on police resources – particularly whether it’s time for the decriminalisation of drug use. The criminalisation of “legal highs” has proven to be an unmitigated disaster – what could once be relatively controlled no longer is, resulting in the emergence of new unregulated and unmonitored “zombie” street drugs like spice and flakka. Deaths from drug use more generally have also started to increase and hit record highs during 2020-214.
The former Police & Crime Commissioner for North Wales, Arfon Jones, has been fairly outspoken in his support for treating drug use as a public health issue rather than a criminal justice matter. He’s called for several measures ranging from the easy-to-agree to up to the controversial. These have included clinically supervised injecting rooms, to allowing prisoners to use cannabis.
3. – University of Nottingham, (February 2021). Policing County Lines: Impact of Covid-19. Available at: https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/research/beacons-of-excellence/rights-lab/resources/reports-and-briefings/2021/february/briefing-policing-county-lines-during-covid-19.pdf
4. – Sky News, (2nd September 2020). “Drug-related deaths hit record high in England and Wales after rising for eighth year in a row”. Available at: https://news.sky.com/story/drug-related-deaths-hit-record-high-in-england-and-wales-after-rising-for-eighth-year-in-a-row-12371678
