Barriers to prosecutions and convictions under the Modern Slavery Act 2015

This is a report “Barriers to prosecutions and convictions under the Modern Slavery Act 2015” from a research project funded by the Modern Slavery and Human Rights Policy and Evidence Centre (PEC), part of the University of Oxford, which in turn is funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC). The research was conducted by Dr Alicia Heys, Senior Lecturer in Modern Slavery at the Wilberforce Institute at the University of Hull, and a Co-Investigator of the PEC on behalf of University of Hull.

Background

The Modern Slavery Act 2015 was introduced to consolidate offences, improve victim protection, and enhance the UK’s ability to prosecute those responsible for human trafficking and modern slavery offences. Despite increased public and professional awareness and a growing number of National Referral Mechanism (NRM) referrals, prosecution and conviction rates under this legislation remain low.

According to the Modern Slavery and Organised Immigration Crime Unit at the National Police Chief’s Council (NPCC), as of June 2024, policing across the UK were dealing with at least 2,497 modern slavery and human trafficking investigations (including crimes committed against both adults and children).

Yet in the year from July 2023 to June 2024, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) recorded 467 prosecutions for modern slavery-flagged crimes in England and Wales, of which 355 (76%) resulted in a conviction. In the same time frame (July 2023 to June 2024), Ministry of Justice statistics note that 114 defendants were proceeded against, 58 were convicted, and 58 sentenced for modern slavery offences in England and Wales. For comparison, in this same time frame of July 2023 to June 2024, there were 17,120 potential victims of modern slavery referred to the National Referral Mechanism across the UK.

While the maximum penalty for offences under the Modern Slavery Act is a life sentence, the average custodial sentence for the year July 2023 to June 2024 was 5 years and 3.5 months (63.5 months), which is an increase from 4 years and 10.2 months (58.2 months) in the year ending June 2023.5 This data all indicates that prosecution, conviction and sentencing under the Modern Slavery Act remains challenging.

Key findings

• While the Modern Slavery Act (MSA) 2015 has provided a unified legal framework for addressing modern slavery, and has raised awareness of the crime, prosecutions and convictions remain low compared to the number of potential victims identified.
• Engagement from survivors is often considered essential to securing prosecutions and convictions but is frequently undermined by poor support to create such engagement, leading to mistrust in the system. Other reasons that deter engagement include fear (of reprisals from traffickers as well as of arrest or deportation), stigma and shame. These issues are commonly
• compounded by practical and logistical barriers such as practitioners’ flawed assumptions of how survivors should present themselves in court, misunderstandings of the impact of trauma, lengthy processes, and language barriers.
• Institutional limitations including a lack of understanding of the nuances of modern slavery cases, insufficient resources, and the complexity and protracted nature of investigations and court cases hinder the effectiveness of legal enforcement.
• Low sentencing and charging for lesser offences in order to increase the chances of successful prosecutions compromise the credibility of the criminal justice system and outcomes for survivors.

Recommendations

For the Ministry of Justice

• Provide dedicated funding for modern slavery investigations, ensuring sufficient resources for specialist units within law enforcement. Respondents highlighted resource shortages as a critical barrier.
• Increase funding for the Victim Navigator programme to expand its reach across the UK. Victim Navigators were praised for maintaining engagement with survivors but are not available in all regions.

For the Home Office

• Review the impact of immigration laws and policies (both as part of the impact assessment before they are introduced, and after implementation) to ensure that they do not deter survivor engagement or undermine modern slavery prosecutions. Respondents identified the hostile immigration environment as a significant barrier with legislative provisions risking discouraging survivors from coming forward.
• Engage with survivors to develop survivor-centred policies. While this report was based primarily on practitioner insights, it is crucial to consider survivor perspectives to ensure that policies best meet their needs.
• Mandate specialist, ongoing training for police and prosecutors on the nuances of modern slavery, victim trauma, and cultural sensitivity. Gaps in knowledge were raised as barriers to successful prosecutions both in terms of the complexity of modern slavery cases, and in how to apply the Modern Slavery Act.
• Include modules on financial investigations in police and prosecutor training programmes to improve their use as a complementary route to prosecution. Financial investigations are an effective tool to reduce reliance on victim testimony.

For law enforcement

• Prioritise the use of financial investigations in modern slavery cases. Such investigations can provide objective evidence that reduces the need to rely on victim testimony.
• Establish multidisciplinary partnerships to leverage expertise from NGOs, victim liaison officers, and financial investigators. Collaboration across organisations was emphasised as key for improving investigations and enhancing trust and communication with survivors.
• Implement the training highlighted in recommendations above.
• Recruit more officers from diverse backgrounds reflective of communities most affected by modern slavery to foster trust and improve engagement with survivors. Diversity in police forces is a necessary step to increase trust and communication with the communities they serve. Cultural awareness is a critical factor in improving survivor engagement.
• Ensure officers are trained on trauma-informed ways of working specific to modern slavery. This would help in treating survivors appropriately and recognising that their demeanour and engagement with services may be influenced by their modern slavery experiences.

For the Crown Prosecution Service

• Increase the use of corroborative evidence, such as financial records and digital data, to build cases that do not depend solely on victim accounts. Such approaches would help overcome some of the challenges of relying on victim testimony.
• Develop a framework to assess the sufficiency of non-testimonial evidence in modern slavery cases. By creating a framework that values alternative forms of evidence, the CPS can reduce reliance on survivors while maintaining robust prosecutions.
• Provide for improved access to special measures, such as video-recorded testimonies. The use of these special measures helps to minimise the stress of participating in court processes.
• Create clear guidelines for accepting charges under the Modern Slavery Act to address high evidentiary thresholds and reduce reliance on lesser offences. Pursing modern slavery for lesser offences risks failing to reflect the severity of such crimes, and risks skewing the figures of modern slavery offences which can impact future resource allocation.
• Implement the training highlighted in recommendations above.

For NGOs and victim support services

• Expand the availability of trauma-informed victim liaison officers to provide consistent support throughout investigations and prosecutions. These roles can be vital in building trust and maintaining survivor engagement.
• Collaborate with survivors to identify barriers to engagement and develop survivor-centred approaches to legal processes and support services. While this report was based primarily on practitioner insights, survivor perspectives are crucial to understanding barriers to engagement and developing processes that will improve cooperation with the criminal justice system.