Cuckooing to become a crime after years of campaigning by Justice & Care

Landmark legislation will make cuckooing a crime in England and Wales after more than three years of determined campaigning from Justice & Care and The Centre for Social Justice (CSJ). 

We welcome the government’s announcement that both cuckooing and child criminal exploitation will be part of a new Crime and Policing Bill, set to be introduced in Parliament this week, and we are looking forward to seeing the details of it. 

Home Secretary Yvette Cooper has confirmed the cuckooing offence will carry a maximum penalty of five years in prison, while the standalone CCE offence will carry a maximum sentence of 10 years. 

Cuckooing sees callous criminals take over the home of a vulnerable person and then use it as a base for criminal activities like drug dealing or storing weapons. Victims are often treated as slaves, with their homes turned into a place of fear and abuse. 

As it stands, cuckooing is not a specific crime in England and Wales, with exploiters often being prosecuted for crimes that don’t fully reflect the harm that has been done. 

We began campaigning with the CSJ to change this after our Victim Navigators witnessed the devastation that cuckooing was causing on the frontline.

Our joint policy team first pushed for cuckooing to be made an offence in the report ‘Cuckooing – The case for strengthening the law against slavery in the home’, in 2021. Since then, we have refused to give up on the issue – publishing multiple pieces of research, and working with survivors, politicians and journalists to fight for change. 

Reported cuckooing cases have been increasing over recent years, with polling for our Slavery at Home report in 2022 finding one in eight people had seen signs of it in their community. 

In one case, Justice & Care supported a grandmother named Susan*, who told ITV how her home had been taken over by a drug gang who burnt her with cigarettes and cut her tongue with a knife. 

The previous Government announced plans to criminalise cuckooing in its Criminal Justice Bill last year, but the legislation did not progress as a General Election was called a week later. 

Criminal exploitation sees victims forced, coerced, deceived, or manipulated by someone else into committing crimes through debts, violence or manipulation. 

Last February, Justice & Care and the CSJ advocated for a specific definition of criminal exploitation under the Modern Slavery Act 2015 after revealing that it was the most common type of modern slavery occurring in the UK over the past four years, according to National Referral Mechanism statistics. Our joint report with the CSJ, ‘Criminal exploitation: Modern slavery by another name’, revealed almost half (45 per cent) of those suffering from criminal exploitation are British boys aged 17 and under. 

The new legislation will also see the introduction of CCE prevention orders, which will mean that courts can put restrictions on people who they believe pose a risk of exploiting a child for criminal purposes. This could include limiting their ability to work with children, contact specific people or go to a certain area.  

Home Secretary, Yvette Cooper, said: ‘The exploitation of children and vulnerable people for criminal gain is sickening and it is vital we do everything in our power to eradicate it from our streets. As part of our Plan for Change, we are introducing these two offences to properly punish those who prey on them, ensure victims are properly protected and prevent these often-hidden crimes from occurring in the first place.  

‘These steps are vital in our efforts to stop the grooming and exploitation of children into criminal gangs, deliver on our pledge to halve knife crime in the next decade and work towards our overall mission to make our streets safer.’ 

Tatiana Gren-Jardan, Head of Policy and Advocacy at Justice & Care, said: ‘We are over the moon that our determination, and that of others who have fought beside us for a cuckooing offence, has finally paid off. 

‘We hope these changes will provide better protections for victims and help act as a deterrent to ruthless criminals who take advantage of vulnerable people for their own benefit. My team will be following developments on the bill closely to ensure it delivers.’