Causeway welcomes child criminal exploitation and cuckooing changes to Crime and Policing Bill
Causeway Charity
Modern slavery and crime reduction charity - supporting, empowering and creating change for marginalised people
Causeway welcomes the UK Government’s Crime and Policing Bill 2025’s creation of new stand-alone criminal offences for forms of criminal exploitation which have gone under-recognised for too long.
Child Criminal Exploitation
The Bill will make it specific offence for an adult to use a child to commit any criminal activity. Latest figures from 2023, show that 3,123 children were referred to the National Referral Mechanism after experiencing criminal exploitation, while Children in Need census data for the year ending 31 March 2024, recorded 15,750 cases where child criminal exploitation was identified as a concern. These cases often involve children being coerced or forced by adults into criminal activities such a county lines drug transportation, theft, or fraud.
Creating this new offence means that it will be harder for exploiters to go unpunished, and who may now face sentences of up to ten years. It will also create child criminal exploitation civil prevention orders that can restrict offenders from being in contact with children or be in specific places.
The new offence will also make children automatically eligible for ‘special measures’ that protect them during legal proceedings, such as giving recorded or protected evidence in court, in the hope it will encourage exploited young people to come forward for help.
Causeway recently developed an Exploitation Risk Tracker which aims to help young people recognise signs that they may be experiencing criminal exploitation. The lived-experience experts we worked with on this spoke about the importance of identifying what exploitation is, opening up and seeking help, and we hope that greater awareness and legal protections created by this new criminal offence will give more survivors the confidence to seek help.
‘Cuckooing’
Causeway is also pleased to see the creation of an offence related to ‘cuckooing,’ or ‘home takeover,’ where someone’s home is taken over without their consent, in order for it to be used as a base for criminal activities such as drug and sexual offences, or storage of weapons or stolen goods.
Between 25 November and 1 December 2024, the National Police Chief’s Council identified 853 suspected cuckooed properties. Causeway has supported Justice and Care and the Centre for Social Justice in campaigning for this to be taken seriously as a crime in itself as we have seen people in our service who have had their lives devastated by criminals taking over their homes.
The new offence will clarify that a person cannot consent to such use of their home if they are under 18, do not have capacity to consent, have not been given sufficient information, or were not able to consent freely. We welcome this as the vulnerability of people with cognitive impairments or drug or alcohol dependency to this type of exploitation cannot be overstated.
Next Steps
If these changes make it to law, the government will issue guidance to professionals. We hope that this guidance establishes statutory definitions of these crimes that take into account the complexity and power imbalances at their centre. We also hope that clear guidelines are established about what support survivors of these crimes are entitled to, who is responsible for providing this, and how they can access this. In particular, we hope this support recognises the long-term impact exploitation can have on survivor’s mental health and provides support for people to recover and thrive.
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