In the Express yesterday, we read:

Knife crime epidemic rising faster in market towns after spread of county lines drug gangs. Knife crime is rising more rapidly in rural counties and market towns than in cities, a study has found. Although most of the police forces in the top 10 included large inner city areas, the study found offences were soaring at an alarming rate outside of urban regions.

According to Police Scotland, there are more than 50 County Lines drug and child-abusing groups active in Scotland, first identified in 2019, commonly in smaller towns where there is no existing local gang strong enough to resist their extreme violence or to compete with their prices. Auchinleck in East Ayrshire seems to be the only case of locals driving them out last November.

They are also more common up the east coast of Scotland, using the railway lines for their underage carriers and in the more deprived areas where their is a reasonably large existing market. In 2019, police raids were being made in Peterhead and in recent months they have raided in places as far north as Wick and as small as Tarves.

While there are no data available for knife crime specifically, a survey of non-sexual crimes of violence from 2018-2022 reveals a similar pattern to that found in England and reinforcing the evidence that County Lines gang activity is fuelling major surges in violence in Scotland’s smaller towns which had previously low levels of such crime.

In Glasgow and surrounding areas – Lanarkshire, Dunbartonshire, Inverclyde – non-sexual crimes of violence have increased but only by less than 10%.

In sharp contrast, the increases in such crime, in smaller towns, on or easily accessed from the main east coast rail lines from England, from 2018-2022, are shocking:

• Borders – 78%
• East Lothian – 47%
• West Lothian – 53%
• Perth & Kinross – 70%
• Fife – 54%
• Angus – 94%
• Aberdeenshire – 71%
• Moray – 96%

BBC Scotland alone refuses to cover this.

Source: https://datamap-scotland.co.uk/category/crime/