Anti-Slavery report highlights Vietnamese victims prosecuted rather than protected as witnesses over cannabis cultivation
Trafficking victims who are forced into crime are being let down by the UK authorities, who are failing to stop them being prosecuted, a new report warns.
The kind of crimes that victims are being forced to commit include begging, ATM theft, benefit fraud and cannabis cultivation. The report, from Anti-Slavery International, is the first instalment of a two-year project from a coalition of NGOs called Race in Europe examining responses to trafficking for criminal exploitation across Europe.
Anti-Slavery International director Aiden McQuade told the Guardian that in too many cases, the police are prosecuting victims rather than protecting them as witnesses who could help track down traffickers.
"We are still seeing kids who appear to be trafficked and neither the courts or the police are taking that into account. It seems police and the courts are going for easy investigations and convictions rather than the substantive investigations that would get the trafficker behind them."
He believes that despite a good understanding of the problems around trafficking and forced criminality at a senior level, there is not enough awareness throughout the force. "Some specialist officers care (about trafficking) but junior officers are overstretched. This is a product of a lack of training and of budget cuts but also a product of a lack of victim protection."
In 2012 the UK Human Trafficking Centre identified 2,225 victims of trafficking, a 9% increase from the previous year. There was a 27% increase in the number of adults trafficked for labour exploitation, a category which includes forcing people into theft, shoplifting, drug production and benefit fraud.
Of all the potential trafficking victims who were forced into cannabis cultivation, 96% were from Vietnam, 81% of whom were children.
The report tells the story of 15-year-old Hai (not his real name). Hai was selling plastic bottles on the street in the capital Hanoi when he was approached by a man who offered to help him reach Europe where he could work. Hai's mother took out a loan against their house to pay an agent to take him. After 14 months of travelling he was told by his traffickers that he owed them even more money and would have to water cannabis plants to pay off the debt. His trafficker left him alone in the house and locked the doors from the outside, returning every few days with food and water. When police raided the house three months later Hai was arrested. He was too scared to tell anyone what had happened to him and his solicitor advised him to plead guilty. He was sentenced to 24 months in an adult prison.
Dorcas Erskine is national co-ordinator of Eaves women's project, which works with female victims of violence and exploitation, including trafficking. She said this treatment is still common, despite recent legal guidance that victims should not be prosecuted.
"There are lots of occasions where the women we support have told the authorities but haven't been believed. We have had a few not so great solicitors who advise their clients to plead guilty, even when they (say) that they have been trafficked."
The question of how to treat victims of trafficking who are forced to commit crimes, particularly children, was addressed by the court of appeal in May this year.
The court heard four cases together, three of them concerning Vietnamese children forced to work in cannabis farms and then convicted of drug offences.
The court overturned all the convictions and in the judgment, stressed that magistrates and judges should be prepared to step in and stop criminal cases against trafficking victims continuing even where the Crown Prosecution Service has brought a case to court.
The CPS is now revising its guidelines on how to treat possible victims of trafficking.
In order to try and find out the extent of the problem of criminalisation of trafficking victims in the UK, the RACE in Europe project looked through media reports of court cases relating to cannabis cultivation prosecutions from both local and national papers.
The search identified 142 reported cases of Vietnamese nationals since 2011 who were prosecuted and convicted for cannabis cultivation where reported court proceedings indicated signs that the defendant might have been a trafficking victim.
The government recently unveiled the draft version of its modern-day slavery bill and NGOs working with trafficking victims had pushed for protection from criminalisation to be part of the bill.
The Eaves project contributed to the consultation on the slavery bill but Erskine is disappointed with what she has seen so far.
"A bill that aims to end modern-day slavery that doesn't ensure victims are not criminalised is not going to end modern-day slavery. It's very strange that the government is proud of signing up to the European directive on trafficking but then they produce a bill that has none of the protection provisions (of the directive).
"It's a very, very disappointing bill and we have a long way to go before it can be useful to trafficking victims."
McQuade also feels that there is a lack of emphasis on victims in the bill as it has been concieved so far. "The disturbing thing is that at the heart of the draft slavery bill there is no mention of victim protection and identification, there is nothing on guardianship for children, nothing for victims of trafficking who have been criminalised. Personally I have concerns that anti-immigration concerns will trump what's necessary in terms of victim protection."
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