Understanding and Preventing ‘Cuckooing’ Victimisation

Laura Bainbridge is an Associate Professor in Criminal Justice in the School of Law at the University of Leeds, UK. She is the founder and chair of the Cuckooing Research & Prevention Network and the UK Compulsory Sobriety Network. Laura’s scholarly interests lie at the nexus of social policy, criminology, and political science. She specialises in violence reduction and innovative qualitative research methods. Her recent research has explored cuckooing victimisation, child criminal exploitation in county lines and local drug markets, enforced alcohol abstinence, and cross-national policy imitation.Rose Broad is a Professor of Criminology and is currently Head of the Department for Criminology at the University of Manchester, UK. Rose’s research interests include human trafficking, modern slavery, responses to violence, organised crime, the management of offenders, and prison education. Her recent research has explored consent, coercion, and fraud in human trafficking relationships and temporal measures of modern slavery victimisation. Rose’s background prior to academia was as a practitioner in criminal justice institutions, and she continues to maintain links with practitioners and policymakers, developing research into practice and research impact.Amy Loughery is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Vulnerability and Policing Futures Research Centre, University of Leeds, UK. Her research primarily focuses on criminal justice interventions that comprise both care and control of marginalised populations with dependence on drugs and/or alcohol. Amy is an active member of the Cuckooing Research & Prevention Network and was formerly a Research Fellow on an N8 Policing Research Partnership study and two Research England-funded projects dedicated to understanding, preventing, and disrupting cuckooing victimisation.

• Introductory Note; 1. Introduction: Cuckooing in Context; 2. County Lines and Exploitation in Drug Markets: Historical and Current Developments; 3. Communities of Practice in Multi Agency Responses to Cuckooing; 4. Adult Grooming, Exploitation, and Home Takeovers; 5. Women’s Experiences of County Lines-related Cuckooing in North Yorkshire; 6. Reclaiming Cuckooing: Beyond County Lines; 7. From Isolation to Invasion: Disability and Loneliness as Catalysts for Cuckooing; 8. Disability and Vulnerability; 9. Housing and Cuckooing: The Role of Tenure in Framing Structural Vulnerability; 10. Care Leavers and Cuckooing: Highlighting the Need to Belong; 11. Concluding Thoughts