Legal Reform for Cuckooing and County Lines
MSB Social Housing and Regeneration
MSB Solicitors' award-winning Social Housing and Regeneration team.
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MSB Partner and Head of Anti-Social Behaviour (Social Housing), Andy Moore, spoke at the Preventing and Disrupting Cuckooing Victimisation Conference at Leeds University delivering a talk on Tackling Cuckooing in Social Housing.
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The conference has been organised by Dr Laura Bainbridge, a Lecturer in Criminal Justice at the University and the founder and chair of the Cuckooing Research & Prevention Network, which is funded by Research England. The two-day conference at the University of Leeds’ School of Law on 30 and 31 January explored emerging and promising practices from across the UK that are being used to tackle cuckooing victimisation as well as showcasing training that is already being delivered to professionals.
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Cuckooing occurs when organised crime groups take control of a vulnerable adult's address, usually as a site from which to prepare, store, or sell drugs. They are often involved in so-called ‘county lines’ drug distribution networks, which cross police and local authority boundaries, and resort to cuckooing to avoid police detection
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On the first day of the conference, Sir Iain Duncan Smith MP called for cuckooing to be criminalised as part of an overhaul of the 2015 Modern Slavery Act.
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Andy also spoke about legal reform and advocated for amendments to Part 1 of the Anti-Social Behaviour Crime and Policing Act 2014. The proposal was to include a cuckooing specific finding and for alternative sentencing guidelines to be adopted by the Court when sentencing those found in breach of such an injunction.
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Andy said, “It’s often incredibly frustrating for Social Housing Providers when they obtain an injunction to protect a victim from cuckooing that the current sentencing guidelines are insufficient to act as a deterrent to offenders. The only evidence of breach is usually from Police partners who simply find the offender in the exclusion zone resulting in the Court deeming the breach to be of low culpability and harm. The starting point for sentencing in such cases is no order which is barely a deterrent. Cuckooing breaches should be considered an A-1 breach due to the significant harm to victims with the starting point being 8 weeks custody”.
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For more information, contact our Head of ASB, Andy Moore, on [email protected].
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It's inspiring to see Andrew Moore tackle such a crucial issue at Leeds University! ?? Helen Keller once said, "Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much." By sharing knowledge and working together, we can make significant strides in ending cuckooing for Social Housing Providers. #TogetherWeCan #SocialChange ?????