Section 45 of the Modern Day Slavery Act 2015: an examination of police investigations

The 2002 Recommended Principles and Guidelines on Human Rights and Human Trafficking of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) recognised that victims might commit unlawful acts in the context of their status as a victim of trafficking . The Principles and Guidelines advised, that such victims must be provided with protection, not punishment, for any criminal acts arising as a direct consequence of their trafficking this recommendation was introduced into legislation within the United Kingdom in 2015 with the Modern Slavery (MS) Act. Victim protection is one of the critical aspects of the 2015 Act. Section 45 of the Act looks to formalise protection for victims from prosecution for offences they may have committed as a victim of modern day slavery. The importance of this section of the Act is to recognise that victims often have little to no choice but to engage in illegal activity and support victim engagement with law enforcement so that the traffickers can be brought to justice. Notwithstanding this, prosecutions of victims continue in the United Kingdom, resulting in trafficking victims spending considerable lengths of time in the criminal justice system. This research seeks to understand how Section 45 of the MS Act impacts police investigations and officers' understanding of the legislation. This analysis presents findings drawn from semi structured interviews with 17 practitioners working within specialist teams dealing with MS and ‘County Lines’. ‘County lines' is a drug distribution model where members of gangs from cities commute to smaller urban areas to increase their profits from distribution networks. This distribution is often across police and local authority boundaries, usually by children or vulnerable people who are coerced into it by the gangs. The research shows a lack of understanding by officers of Section 45 and of what support is available to victims of this often-complex crime type. In conclusion, the research pulls together a series of recommendations to inform police practices to effectively address the understanding of the non-punishment principle within the MS Act. “William Wilberforce convinced his generation that slavery was a sin. That belief has not changed. The sin lies in our ignorance to its existence around us.” Welby.J. (2017).