RT Article
T1 The changing shape of street-level heroin and crack supply in England: commuting, holidaying and cuckooing drug dealers across ‘county lines’
JF The British journal of criminology
VO 58
IS 6
SP 1323
OP 1342
A1 Comber, Ross
A2 Moyle, Leah
LA English
YR 2018
UL https://krimdok.uni-tuebingen.de/Record/1582414491
AB Street-level drug markets have traditionally been understood as operating predominantly at a local level, and there has been an absence of contemporary research that has challenged accepted thinking around their shape and organization. This article aims to outline an important development in the retail drug supply landscape, analysing a fast evolving and expanding drug supply model that involves ‘outreach’ selling from major supply hubs, direct to heroin/crack users in provincial satellite areas. Drawing on a mixed method approach analysing heroin/crack markets in six English locales, we explore how so-called ‘county lines’ drug dealing manifests in these spaces. Findings suggest that distinctive supply practices including ‘commuting’, ‘holidaying’ and ‘cuckooing’ have emerged and that out-of-town dealers regularly exploit vulnerable populations in order to maximize economic gain in these new ‘host’ drug markets.
K1 Drug market
K1 Drug dealing
K1 Drug supply
K1 Cuckooing
K1 Heroin/crack
K1 Vulnerability
K1 Kuckuck
K1 Drogenhandel
DO 10.1093/bjc/azx068