This article looks at a very specific type of UK drugs crime known as County Lines, and specifically at an offense known as “cuckooing”. However, whilst it and some of the offenses that accompany this form of drug trafficking may be somewhat unique to the UK, there are components of it, which are much more general, and easily relatable and applicable to crimes and violent crimes that are committed elsewhere. In the early 2000’s London and other major cities had found their drug markets pretty much saturated, and there was intense violent competition for control of those that existed. To avoid this intense competition, many gangs sought out “new” markets and started to expand their operations into smaller towns and rural areas, where there was less competition, yet a still relatively high demand for drugs (specifically heroin and crack cocaine). These smaller towns/drug markets had previously been overlooked by the city gangs and supply was usually provided by a few individual dealers – who lacked established networks - rather than more organized and larger scale gangs. This meant it was fairly easy for a large urban gang that was used to using violence to easily displace these individual dealers or force them to now work for them etc. One of the signs of this move of urban-to-rural crime is an uptake in violence e.g., a smaller, rural town that might have seen a few drunken fights on a Friday/Saturday night, now becomes a mini war zone due to gangs that had been normalized to violence in more urban settings moving in and setting up a “County Line”. The “County Line” refers to a phone line on a mobile burner that people use to contact a dealer usually via text to place their orders; they are then given a time and place to meet a “runner”, usually a teenager of school age, so the transaction can take place (this allowed the gangs to reduce their presence in risky areas).

                One of the features of county line drug dealing/trafficking is that of “cuckooing”. The cuckoo (a brood parasite) bird is famous for laying its eggs in another bird’s nest, with their young hatching earlier and eventually outmuscling the other chicks. For urban based gangs that needed a place to act as a stash house and base in an unfamiliar “new” area, they started to take over people’s flats and houses and use them as bases from which to operate. Sometimes, residents handed over control of their property quasi-voluntarily e.g., they were drug users who received free drugs/“product” for letting the gangs use their property. Sometimes, it was the result of being threatened, and sometimes the gangs “befriended” vulnerable people who either didn’t fully understand how their house/flat was being used and/or lacked the necessary social skills and mental capacity to resist etc. This is sometimes referred to as a “Mate Crime” i.e., an individual targets a vulnerable person and pretends to be their friend/”mate” in order to exploit them. Often the elderly and/or individuals who have learning difficulties and/or mental health issues are left isolated and vulnerable. They may also be used to commit other offenses on behalf of those that “cuckoo” them because they lack the mental capacity to understand the legal consequences of their actions e.g., they might not understand that having/storing a firearm on their property/being in possession of a firearm carries a minimum five-year sentence (though there is some degree of flexibility surrounding this) etc. If we have potentially vulnerable people in our lives, we should understand that there are those who will think nothing of exploiting them for their own ends/gains, with little to no regard of what happens to the other person.

                Just as it’s important for gangs involved in County Lines to find vulnerable people, the type of property is also important. Many of those who work with vulnerable populations in areas where county lines exist recognize this and try to house such individuals in non-ground-floor apartments and flats, as these are the types of property that the gangs tend to prefer, as if they are raided by police they have a better chance of escaping than if they are on a second floor, and may only have one escape route e.g., down a set of stairs. Also, by placing people who are vulnerable to being targeted for cuckooing in a non-ground-floor apartment or flat, it makes it harder for the gangs to access these individuals e.g., they can’t climb into their backyard and bang on the back windows and door(s) etc., which would put psychological and emotional pressure on those who live there. As well as targeting ground floor apartments, gangs would also target flats and apartments that had communal front doors etc. Ironically in most CPTED (Crime Prevention through Environmental Design) thinking, these doors – that require a key code to enter - represent another layer of protection from offenders. However, when you have taken over another person’s apartment and have the code this isn’t the case. One housing officer who oversaw a block of apartments (which had been targeted for cuckooing) noted that once someone, or a number of people, had gotten inside of the building, you effectively lost control of it to them. 

                The importance of “place” rather than simply “person” can be seen in the way that the same locations/apartments are used time and again, even when the person living in the apartment changes/moves on, demonstrating how “cuckooed nests” become distinct local places. There is often a cyclical nature with cuckooing, whereby a gang takes over a property for a period of time, and moves on to another, only to return later and move in again. A gang may move out because they are concerned about surveillance by law enforcement, and because the location is deemed “hot”, and then return a few months later when they believe there is less interest in the property. However, they understand that it is a location that those who use drugs are aware of, giving it value. They also have “runners” those who meet up with users in other locations who know the area, and the potential escape routes if/when chased. The value of bicycles as a transport mechanism in anti-surveillance has long been appreciated in the security industry, and it didn’t take those involved in illegal activities to understand the effectiveness of a teenager on a bike for evading law enforcement.

                One of the issues, Pearson noted in the eighties, was that residents were often reluctant to acknowledge drug dealing on the estates where they lived, because if their locales began to develop a reputation as a “drug market” it could affect house prices, government and council subsidies, and even credit ratings etc. This meant that residents would often turn a “blind eye” and not report certain crimes on their estates, that could effectively mean that they were turned down for a loan etc. They were willing to put up with a certain amount and certain types of crime in order for where they lived not to affect them adversely. There may be a similar attitude to “cuckooing” i.e., local residents understand what is going on but are reluctant to report it or do anything about it for fear of their neighborhood getting a bad name. Unfortunately, the success of cuckooing – making public drug markets private - can lead to it being reproduced in other locales.