Critical briefing: cuckooing

“Cuckooing” sounds deceptively pleasant. Who wouldn’t love to hear a cuckoo in the morning? Alas, “cuckooing” — the subject of a recent BBC feature — is anything but pleasant. It combines some of the most depressing and dysfunctional aspects of British society.

“Cuckooing” is when criminals take over the home of an addict or an otherwise vulnerable person and use it as a base for storing and dealing drugs. Its name was taken from the cuckoo’s practice of laying its eggs in other birds’ nests.

County lines drug trafficking — where drugs are trafficked from major cities to smaller towns and rural areas — contains multiple levels of exploitation. Drug users are being exploited, of course, and young teenagers — often called “ygs”, which stands for “young gangsters” — are often compelled to carry drugs on behalf of older criminals. 

As Eleanor Hancock wrote for The Critic in 2024:

In a report published in February 2024, the [Centre for Social Justice] found that almost two thirds of all human trafficking referrals since late 2019 were males of British origin, with 65 per cent of this cohort being under the age of 17. Nearly all of these children have been trafficked through criminal child exploitation, and this is happening through “county lines” drug networks.

Occupying the home of a vulnerable person as a base for drug trafficking — which often leads to its being called a “trap house” or a “bando” — is a cheap and inconspicuous tactic. “In this model,” Dr Jack Spicer and his colleagues wrote in Trends in Organized Crime: 

… force is used against a vulnerable resident, or they are ‘befriended’, with the primary aim of acquiring their home. An outpost is then established for use by urban supply groups, not usually to directly retail from in the way traditionally associated with crack houses, but as a more general base in provincial towns to facilitate the County Lines methodology.

The authors take pains to be clear that there are different means by which criminals occupy a home, with different levels of subtlety. Sometimes, there is no subtlety, and their proper residents are beaten or blackmailed. Sometimes, though, the victims are befriended or a criminal even initiates a sexual relationship with them. The occupation of their home can therefore be established and maintained with varying degrees of fear, confusion, and incomprehension. 

It is impossible to know how prevalent cuckooing is, but with the Metropolitan Police recording 1500 incidents in London between 2025 and 2026, it seems inevitable that there are thousands of other cases spread across the UK. This leads to vulnerable people being assaulted, and robbed of property, and having their homes damaged and cluttered. Some victims have been murdered, like the jazz musician William Algar. On the flipside, one addict murdered one of the men who had been cuckooing him and hid his body in an attic. The teenager’s corpse was found eight months later.

Cuckooing leads to a general decline in properties, and in the people who visit properties, that can damage neighbourhoods — leading to intimidation, antisocial behaviour, littering and signs of drug paraphernalia. 

This was an underground problem in recent years, but has begun to penetrate popular culture. EastEnders had a cuckooing subplot in 2025 (which led to the death of a perpetrator). The rapper Headie One’s hit 2023 single “Martin’s Sofa” is framed as being from the perspective of a young drug dealer involved in what sounds like a relatively benign case of cuckooing. 

Recently, it was announced that a new policing bill:

… will make it an offence to exercise control over another person’s dwelling without their consent for the purpose of enabling the dwelling to be used in connection with the commission of specified criminal activity. 

A lack of consent could exist if residents:

… are under 18 years old; do not have capacity to give consent; have not been given sufficient information to enable them to make an informed decision; have not given consent freely; or have withdrawn their consent.

An Englishman’s home is indeed his castle, and no Englishman should have it conquered

This is very welcome, but it is important to add two things. Firstly, criminalising the practice should be only one step in an approach to the problem. Finding and supporting potential targets, where possible, could minimise future harms and the need for complex and expensive interventions. Secondly, identifying victims and criminals, in cases where people might not quite know that they are victims, or might feel unable to contact the police in cases where they do, requires patient and sensitive intelligence and liaison work, as well as close coordination with social services and with other police forces.

An Englishman’s home is indeed his castle, and no Englishman should have it conquered.