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Remember us in your will – prolong our life? The Institute of Race Relations (IRR) which publishes Race & Class is, despite the increasingly hostile and racist climate, finding it extremely hard to raise funds. Could you help us by remembering IRR in your will? IRR is a registered charity in the UK No 223989. Further details about donating or supporting IRR can be found at: irr.org.uk/donate. © Institute of Race Relations 2024 Cover photograph by Oliver Cole via Unsplash Visit journals.sagepub.com/home/rac Free access to tables of contents and abstracts. Site-wide access to the full text for members of subscribing institutions.
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1201325 research-article2023 RAC0010.1177/03063968231201325Race & ClassKoch et al.: SAGE Los Angeles, London, New Delhi, Singapore, Washington DC, Melbourne ‘County lines’: racism, safeguarding and statecraft in Britain INSA KOCH, PATRICK WILLIAMS and LAUREN WROE Abstract: Government policies relating to dealers in ‘county lines’ drugs trafficking cases have been welcomed as a departure from punitive approaches to drugs and ‘gang’ policing, in that those on the bottom rung of the drugs economy of heroin and crack cocaine are no longer treated as criminals but as potential victims and ‘modern slaves’ in need of protection. However, our research suggests not so much a radical break with previous modes of policing as that the term ‘county lines’ emerged as a logical extension of the government’s racist and classist language surrounding ‘gangs’, knife crime and youth violence. Policies implemented in the name of safeguarding the vulnerable also act as a gateway for criminalisation not just under drugs laws but also modern slavery legislation. The government’s discovery of, and responses to, ‘county lines’ hinge on a moral Insa Koch is Chair of British Cultures at the University of Sankt Gallen, Switzerland. Trained as both a lawyer and an anthropologist, she researches questions of race, class and the state in Britain. She is author of Personalizing the State: an anthropology of law, politics and welfare in austerity Britain (OUP, 2018) and winner of the SLSA-Hart prize. Patrick Williams is a senior lecturer in the department of Criminology and Sociology at Manchester Metropolitan University. His research examines processes of criminalisation and institutional drivers of racial injustice across the criminal legal system of England and Wales. He is the coauthor of the reports ‘Dangerous Associations: joint enterprise, “gangs” and racism’ and ‘Data-driven policing: the hardwiring of discriminatory policing practices across Europe’. Lauren Wroe is an assistant professor in the Sociology department at Durham University. Her research and practice involve challenging harm in child safeguarding systems and connected state practices. She is a co-founder of Social Workers Without Borders, co-editor of the book Social Work with Refugees, Asylum Seekers and Migrants: theory and skills for practice. https://doi.org/10.1177/03063968231201325 Race & Class Copyright © 2023 Institute of Race Relations, 2024, Vol. 65(3) 3­–26 10.1177/03063968231201325 journals.sagepub.com/home/rac

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Remember us in your will – prolong our life? The Institute of Race Relations (IRR) which publishes Race & Class is, despite the increasingly hostile and racist climate, finding it extremely hard to raise funds. Could you help us by remembering IRR in your will? IRR is a registered charity in the UK No 223989. Further details about donating or supporting IRR can be found at: irr.org.uk/donate.

© Institute of Race Relations 2024 Cover photograph by Oliver Cole via Unsplash

Visit journals.sagepub.com/home/rac Free access to tables of contents and abstracts. Site-wide access to the full text for members of subscribing institutions.

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