“Crossing County Lines”
Abs has become a friend of mine in prison. We have often talked about the journeys and the choices that led us to commit our offences. Like me, Abs feels deep regret for his offences and is determined to make a better version of himself in prison.
During the ‘Unlocking Criminology’ course that we attended with students from Bath Spa University Abs spoke from bitter experience about the ‘County Lines’ drug dealing. After the session I asked him if he would write his story for the Jailhouse Moose blog. I am proud to say that Abs is the first guest author on the blog – I hope the first of many.
Abs is in his thirties and came to the UK after his family were displaced by the civil war in Somaliland. He moved to London as a child before returning to Somaliland briefly at age 15. His mum had organised the trip in order to ensure Abs appreciated why they had moved to the UK and how fortunate they were – that Abs would not take things in the UK for granted. But when Abs returned to Britain his mum was seriously ill. Abs had never really known his father, so when his mum died he found himself very much alone. This is his story in his words.
[sic] My aunt came over to our house one day and announced the news of my mother’s death. Things have never been the same for me since that day in terms of relationships with my siblings or just life in general; I was a broken young man.
At the time of these emotional events I was going through the most crucial time of a young student’s life. My G.C.S.E.s were months away and how I was going to get through it was beyond me. I began hanging around with a totally different crowd of juvenile delinquents, who wanted to do nothing more than smoke cannabis and bunk off school. There was no one there to shout at me for not going to school or to discipline me when I did something wrong. I felt as though nobody really cared and I could do as I pleased, free as a bird, but was hurting deep down. At school my tutor Mr W was beginning to lose faith in me too, as I was in top sets maths, English and Science, but in his eyes’ wasn’t taking things seriously at all. I don’t know whether or not the school was informed of my bereavement, but I was given absolutely no support or counselling at a time where I need an arm around me to tell me everything would be O.K. I wasn’t approached by any member of staff about my home situation at all, but instead after a few weeks of me going off the rails, I was permanently excluded a week before my mock G.C.S.E.s. I was told to come back to do my exams, but by then I didn’t even care at all about the exams, I just wanted to block out what was going on in my life one way or another. That was the last time I was in formal education. From being in school as a normal kid, I began to be groomed into a world of drugs which changed my life forever.
As time went on I began to consume more cannabis to block out my pain and eventually was asked to come and sell drugs by a few older guys from the local area. Seeing as I had no other income at all it seemed to me at the time the only option I could take. I began selling class A drugs in and around the whole Greenwich borough, sleeping in crack houses and urine infested stairwells. The lifestyle amazed me and I stuck at it for numerous years without being caught. At first I thought the people I was selling drugs with were family and friends who wanted to see me doing well for myself, but soon realised I was being treated like a commodity which could easily be replaced, as these older guys were only interested in their own gains. Many of my friends over that period of time were being caught with drugs and being sent to jail. {We} The Woolwich Boys had a fearsome reputation on the streets of Southeast London. As time went on and I continued peddling misery in the local area, all sorts of bad things were happening to people around me. It was around 2010 when I decided I wanted to go out of town to different areas, to do the same thing we were doing in our area. This led me to go to numerous different counties, to peddle drugs along with the naive bunch of teenagers I’d convinced to join me, who were now in the position I found myself so many years ago. This vicious cycle is still happening but has only recently been identified by police and government as the County Lines drug dealing.
I carried on with this lifestyle until 2014 when I decided enough was enough and wanted to do something better with my life. I soon came to realise that none of these things were making me happy and that not spending time with my family and not having that connection to my brothers and sisters was really taking a huge toll on my life. I decided to go back and try to reconcile my relationship with my father. I moved into a flat with him and became his primary carer, this helped me bond with him more than at any time in my life. For the first time in my life I began looking for work and trying to contribute to society, but I was hitting brick walls at every turn with things like CRB checks and no work experience – my convictions for assault on police and cannabis possession came back to haunt me and I was refused work at every turn. This had a negative impact on me not having any income and not finding work led me back on the rocky road to destruction.
In November 2014 I decided to go back to Southend Essex and switch on a ‘work phone’ and I got back to doing the only work that I had known in my life. I picked up two teenage workers (as usual) and got back to work. After three days of reactivating my work phone I was involved in a fight that cost somebody his life. I went from not having so much as a fight in 10 years, to somebody dying because of a stupid decision I had made along with my other co-defendants to rob a rival drug dealer, who was selling drugs in the same vicinity as I was.
I faced trial for murder, attempted murder and conspiracy to rob and was subsequently convicted of manslaughter, unlawful wounding and conspiracy to rob. I am serving a sentence of 16 years with an extended licence of 5 years.
The main reason I decided to write this is that I am disgusted with what my life had led me to become and do. I truly believe that if certain events hadn’t of happened during my early teenage years, these tragic events could have been avoided. Obviously the tragic death of my mother isn’t something I could have prevented, but that support I needed at such a crucial time in my life was not available to me from friends, family or people in authority that could have made a difference. That arm of support was not extended to me at such a pivotal moment and I ask how many other vulnerable teenagers are going through the same thing.
Since being imprisoned I have used my time constructively. I am doing an Open University course intent on gaining qualifications which will help me in my quest to help steer young vulnerable teenagers away from the path I was once amazed at. I know there are young teenagers influenced just as I was by the fast cars, women and flashy lifestyles of the older drug dealers in their communities. Just like me these are the types of people these teenagers are exposed to, not bankers or city traders wearing suits. At those ages you aspire to become what you see and if all you’re seeing is these types of people, no wonder so many teenagers are being lured into that dead-end road.
I am willing to work in whatever way I can to help prevent people choosing a similar path in life as I did. The experiences of that lifestyle are something only people who have been through it can talk about, it is more powerful to hear it straight from the horse’s mouth. This is something I never had at that age that I believe every teenager should be taught about, the difference between making these youngsters a value to our society – or giving them a prison number and leading them to fail. [sic]
