Citation

Castro-Gonzalez L. R. Soc. Open Sci. 2023; 10(5): e221297.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2023, Royal Society Publishing)

DOI

10.1098/rsos.221297

PMID

37153368

PMCID

PMC10154935

Abstract

The County Lines Model (CLM) is a relatively new illicit drugs distribution method found in Great Britain. The CLM has brought modern slavery and public health issues, while challenging the law-enforcement capacity to act, as coordination between different local police forces is necessary. Our objective is to understand the territorial logic behind the line operators when establishing a connection between two places. We use three different spatial models (gravity, radiation and retail models), as each one of them understands flow from place i to j in a different way. Using public data from the Metropolitan Police of London, we train and cross-validate the models to understand which of the different physical and socio-demographic variables are considered when establishing a connection. We analyse hospital admissions by drugs, disposable household income, police presence and knife crime events, in addition to the population of a particular place and the distance and travel times between two different locations. Our results show that knife crime events and hospital admissions by misuse of drugs are the most important variables. We also find that London operators distribute to the territory known as the 'south' of England, as negligible presence of them is observed outside of it.

Language: en

Keywords

spatial analysis; behavioural sciences; County Lines Model; crime detection; data sciences