Police county lines strategy ‘cruelly targets’ black youth in UK

Home Office approach to tackling drug operations is based on ‘racialised tropes’, says new study

The Home Office’s approach to tackling county lines drug operations is based on unproven assumptions and “racialised tropes” that criminalise Black boys and young men, according to new research.

The study also found that the policing strategy towards county lines stigmatised Black youngsters in a similar way to how the Metropolitan police’s discredited gang violence matrix database was found to be discriminatory.