Cuckooing
Cuckooing is a form of action, termed by the police, in which the home of a vulnerable person is taken over by a criminal in order to use it to deal, store or take drugs, facilitate sex work, as a place for them to live, or to financially abuse the tenant. The practice is associated with county lines drug trafficking. It is also known to occur as part of mate crime, the act of befriending a person with the intent to exploit them.[1]
The term cuckooing comes from the cuckoo's practice of taking over other birds' nests for its young.[2][3] In this context, the term was mentioned in 1992 by Michael E. Buerger, was subsequently overlooked, and then regained wider use from 2010.[2][4][5] In the 2010s, cuckooing was becoming an increasingly common problem in the South of England.[4][6][7][8]
In 2023, Labour MP Jess Phillips and Conservative MP Iain Duncan Smith called for cuckooing to be criminalised as part of a review of the Modern Slavery Act 2015.[9]
The Crime and Policing Act 2026 made cuckooing a specific criminal offence.[10]
References
[edit]- ^ "'Cuckooing' criminals took woman's house and turned it into drug den". BBC News. 6 August 2024. Retrieved 7 August 2024.
- ^ a b McLean, Robert; Robinson, Grace; Densley, James A. (2019). County Lines: Criminal Networks and Evolving Drug Markets in Britain. Springer Nature. pp. 32–35. ISBN 978-3-030-33361-4.
- ^ Windle, James; Moyle, Leah; Coomber, Ross (6 February 2020). "'Vulnerable' Kids Going Country: Children and Young People's Involvement in County Lines Drug Dealing". Youth Justice. 20 (1–2): 64–78. doi:10.1177/1473225420902840. hdl:10468/9640. ISSN 1473-2254. S2CID 212422315.
- ^ a b Spicer, Jack; Moyle, Leah; Coomber, Ross (21 June 2019). "The variable and evolving nature of 'cuckooing' as a form of criminal exploitation in street level drug markets". Trends in Organized Crime. doi:10.1007/s12117-019-09368-5. hdl:10072/386328. ISSN 1936-4830.
- ^ Buerger, Michael E. (1 January 1992). "Defensive Strategies of the Street-Level Drug Trade" (PDF). Journal of Crime and Justice. 15 (2): 31–51. doi:10.1080/0735648X.1992.9721463. ISSN 0735-648X.
- ^ Race, Michael (25 October 2017). "New-look police team hits the streets in Headington, Marston and Barton". Oxford Mail. Retrieved 5 November 2017.
- ^ Doward, Jamie (2 October 2010). "Vulnerable tenants targeted by drug gang 'cuckoos'". The Observer. ISSN 0029-7712. Retrieved 2017-11-05.
- ^ "Drug dealers target vulnerable in south". BBC News. 22 June 2017. Retrieved 5 November 2017.
- ^ Booth, Robert (2023-02-26). "Jess Phillips and Iain Duncan Smith lead calls to criminalise 'cuckooing'". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 2026-05-16.
- ^ "Crime and Policing Act 2026: child criminal exploitation, cuckooing (home takeover) and internal concealment factsheet". GOV.UK. Retrieved 2026-05-16.
Further reading
[edit]- "It can be stopped" (Archived) . Centre for Social Justice, August 2018