All names have been changed to protect the identities of interviewees.
Author
- Emily Kenway
PhD Candidate, Social Policy, University of Edinburgh
Patrick is 32 years old and has been homeless on and off in Edinburgh since growing up in care. He speaks with a rasping quality due to the ravages of sleeping outdoors in cruel Scottish winters. Until recently, he was one of thousands of people in the UK trapped in exploitation, often referred to as modern slavery .
In the UK over the past five years, more than 59,000 people have been identified as possible victims of exploitation - sometimes having been trafficked into the country for this express purpose. Some are forced into criminal forms of labour, like growing marijuana, or put to work in agriculture, hospitality, care or construction in illegal conditions. Still more are trapped in private homes in what is termed "domestic servitude".
And there is Patrick's category, which is sexual exploitation.
Patrick began taking drugs at 14 years old while in care. Two years later, he was kicked out of the children's home and met an older man who introduced him to gammahydroxybutrate, or "G" as Patrick calls it. This is known as a "chemsex" drug due to its ability to induce arousal and reduce inhibitions.
The dealer began having sex with him and taking him to sex parties with other men. Soon, Patrick was addicted to G and, over time - the precise length is unclear as, like many people who've experienced trauma and addiction, his memories are highly fragmented - the man began to control him. If Patrick wanted more G, he had to have sex with the older man or with other people he selected. Specific sex acts were demanded, regardless of Patrick's consent.
This controlling behaviour escalated: if Patrick wanted heating in the room in which he slept, if he wanted access to electricity to charge his phone, if he wanted clean clothes or food, if he wanted to avoid being hit, sex was required.
"I never had a choice," Patrick tells me about his time living in that house. "If I hadn't got the drugs, I'd die."
The man kept him on a chemical leash for years. He was not physically restrained in the house, and he had access to his own bank account and benefits payments. Sometimes he slept rough to escape the abuse - but he always returned, because he lived in fear of "rattling", as he calls withdrawal.
It wasn't just fear of the physical suffering involved in going without the drug. Patrick's father murdered his mother when he was a small child. He describes his addiction as a chance to feel free of that trauma - to feel "like superman, like flying".
The link between addiction and exploitation
Addiction was a driving force in Patrick's exploitation. And he isn't alone: several court cases involving the exploitation of homeless people have acknowledged the role of addiction in their victimisation.
In 2013, R v Connors found that the Connors family, which ran a casual construction business in Bedfordshire, had recruited homeless men into their service. The men were promised accommodation, food and reasonable wages, only to receive "something like £10 per day" - if they were paid at all. They worked long hours in poor conditions without necessary equipment or clothing, and "on occasion they were subjected to violence or the threat of violence".
As a result, three members of the Connors family received custodial sentences of between four and 14 years . The court judgement noted that their victims "were chosen deliberately. Usually they were homeless, addicted to alcohol, friendless and isolated."
Three years later, the case of R v Rooney found that 11 members of the Rooney family had victimised at least 18 people in Lincolnshire, forcing them to work without pay and to live in squalid conditions for up to 26 years. In one instance, they made a victim dig his own grave to force him to sign a contract of lifelong servitude. Nine members of the family were sentenced to jail, with most receiving sentences of five years or more.
After a subsequent unsuccessful appeal , the judge drew a direct link between victimisation, addiction and homelessness, stating: "The appellants were said to have manipulated and controlled these men by withholding pay [and] feeding their vulnerabilities and addictions, such as to alcohol or cannabis."
It didn't end there. In 2020, the office of the UK's Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner examined Operation Fort , "the UK's largest anti-slavery prosecution", which took four years to conclude. It found that some of the victims had been recruited from homeless shelters and were addicted to drugs or alcohol.
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The role of addiction in all these cases is important to acknowledge - as is recognising that homelessness isn't a singular thing . Some people experience homelessness only once; others are homeless repeatedly and for years. There are people for whom lacking shelter is the main measure by which they are disadvantaged, which differs to those who are "multiply excluded" or who have "severe and multiple disadvantages" - including histories of institutional care, substance dependency, and criminal records. And that's without layering on additional factors such as race, ethnicity, sexuality and gender.
As part of my PhD research , I spent several months investigating Edinburgh's street community, delving into homeless people's experiences of exploitation, and finding out how and why these experiences occurred.
I chose to work exclusively with people who, like Patrick, were either British or had migration statuses that afforded them the same rights as British people (such as access to benefits). Other statuses - like being an asylum seeker, being on highly restrictive work visas or being undocumented - are widely recognised to make people more vulnerable to being exploited. Removing this factor enabled me to focus on victimisation that could not be explained by immigration policy, and which might point to new or under-explored territories.
I uncovered many cases like Patrick's: homeless British people who had been exploited. But I also met people who were homeless and had not been exploited. And one of the main differences was addiction. Everyone who had been exploited while homeless had a substance dependency. And it seemed to be this, more than homelessness, which had put them in harm's way.
Debt bondage on the streets of Edinburgh
Like Patrick, Paul is a white Scottish man in his 30s. He began sofa-surfing at the age of 11 after leaving his abusive family home. Since then, his life has been chronically chaotic: rough sleeping, prison, time in hostels, social housing and back again. Addiction has been the sole stable feature - in his case, a heroin habit which started "when I was 22, in prison".
Paul has done various things for money over the years: begging (but only once because "I couldn't deal with the shame of sitting down with people I knew walking past"); house-breaking ("shit stuff I wish I could take back"); shoplifting and reselling ("bacon, cheese, booze, anything that was more expensive"); and also drug running. It was this last method where he got into trouble.
Paul was shoplifting and wasn't making much money when he "got an offer" to become a drug runner instead. Although movies would have us believe that most modern slavery is the result of kidnapping or abduction, it's usually the result of a subtler process . The potential victim is offered something they need, such as money or passage to a different country, and it goes wrong.
For Patrick and Paul, what they needed was drugs. Paul accepted the offer and began working as a runner, taking drugs from the dealer's house to the customers and risking arrest on the way. He was paid in small amounts of heroin for his personal use. Looking back, he sees the dealer as "basically getting me deeper and deeper into trouble", by escalating his addiction and using it as a control mechanism to keep him working - like the chemical leash experienced by Patrick.
For Jack, a third Scottish homeless man, it was worse. Initially, he bought drugs (both heroin and crack cocaine) using cash, but then a dealer began giving him more than he could afford. "I'd say I only want a half-ounce … and he'd say nah, he's gonna give me the full one."
Over time, Jack's debt grew. He tried to repay it by working as a drug runner for the man, but the money could never be paid off. This was partly because he always needed his next hit, but also because the dealer was inflating the debt each time. There was no way out.
The dealer was also, according to Jack, "quite a fuckin' scary bloke" - which turned out to be Jack's way of disclosing that he had been threatened when he tried to leave for a different dealer. At least once, he had been hit.
The Gangmasters and Labour Abuse Authority describes debt bondage as when "an employer or controller will use different tactics to trap the victim in an endless cycle of debt which can never be repaid". In Jack's case, as with others in my investigation, it was a particular instrumentalisation of that chemical leash.
"We call it 'in your pocket'," Jack explains. "That's what they say: 'I've got him in my pocket now.'"
Paul and Jack had experienced localised permutations of what government and police call county lines - the transporting of drugs by children or vulnerable adults under coercion.
It may have a special label, but this is a normal part of the drug dealing business model. When I recount Paul's and Jack's experiences to Ryan, another homeless Scottish man who is familiar with the drug economy thanks to his dealer dad, he snorts: "Well aye, obviously."
Into the arms of would-be exploiters
Patrick, Paul and Jack had all been exploited within the drug economy in one way or another, and this is where government-approved county lines strategies are focused. But addiction drives exploitation more broadly than the drug sector itself; as in the Rooney and Connors cases, legal employment sectors including construction and farmwork are subject to addiction-fuelled exploitation too.
When Jack was approached to paint scaffolding poles for £80 a day, he jumped at the chance - it looked like good money for an easy task. But the job wasn't what it seemed. The recruiter knew Jack was an addict and dropped him off alone at a warehouse with a bag of speed, so he would work through the night with no sleep. This happened for four weekends in a row, with the man alternating between treating Jack well ("made me feel like I was 'the man'") and frightening him ("he pure intimidated me"). The £80 per day never materialised.
In Paul's case, he was offered farmwork by a man outside a soup kitchen he frequented. Paul says he didn't trust the guy "just from looking at him … and the way he went about it, like strolling up to a homeless place. That's where most serial killers go to get victims."
Paul was warned off by street acquaintances who'd heard of people being treated badly at the farm. "They were living in, basically, homeless situations - in a barn or something with no heating and stuff like that, being worked when the guy says … You've no money to get home, you don't know where you are."
Yet even with this information, when it happened a second time, Paul decided to go. He needed money for his heroin habit. Thankfully, he was too slow to say yes and he lost out to two other men. He doesn't know what happened to them.
When Paul and I met, he was staying off heroin, thanks to methadone and various other prescription drugs. I asked what he'd do if someone approached him with the same kind of job offer now. He said he'd decline; he no longer needs the money for heroin.
Lorraine, in her 40s and also Scottish, spent years doing sex work. She'd been in various situations during that time, including being deceived into brothel work based on potential earnings which turned out to be untrue, and being pimped by someone who "was supposed to be a friend".
When we met, Lorraine was no longer doing sex work for anyone but herself. I asked what had changed. Along with getting a place in an emergency shelter, she said it was "because I'm not using [drugs], you know; I'm not using any more. I used to be a prolific crack and heroin addict."
Paul and Lorraine aren't alone. Nearly everyone I've interviewed draws a direct line between the high cost of illegal drugs and the likelihood of being exploited. In contrast, those who've got clean are free from coercion and able to get by on their benefits - benefits they receive, in general, for severe mental health conditions and learning disabilities.
Can criminals be victims too?
Ryan was right when he snorted "aye, obviously" to me: the link between addiction and exploitation should be plain to see. There are passing mentions of addiction issues among homeless survivors peppered in the Rooney, Connors, Operation Fort and other case documents. So why had all bar one of the people whom I met, and who shared their stories of exploitation with me, not been flagged as possible victims by services?
The one exception to this rule offers some answers.
Piotr came to the UK after seeing an advert for a job in a car garage. He liked that first job. Even though it paid lower than the minimum wage, it was enough to meet his needs and the boss was reasonable. But when that garage closed and his long-distance marriage broke down, Piotr relapsed into alcoholism. He needed to find a new job so he could fund his daily intake.
Another garage owner who was aware of Piotr's dependency offered him work. They didn't make an agreement about money, but Piotr told me he'd hoped to get around £20 a day plus some food or cigarettes. That may sound bad to people accustomed to legal minimum wages, but the reality turned out much worse.
Piotr wasn't paid at all. He slept in a caravan on the garage site, and if he wanted to use gas or electricity, he had to pay for it … with no wages. He told me how the boss would shout at him, and sometimes hit him too.
Thankfully, after around a year, Piotr was able to leave and, during the period we met, he was working somewhere that treated him better and paid him consistently - though still below the legal minimum.
It was while Piotr was working at this new and better place that homelessness support workers encountered him and began to wonder whether he'd been exploited. The fact they were correct isn't the point here; rather, why had they flagged his victimisation but not Patrick's, Paul's, Lorraine's or Jack's? And what might this tell us about homelessness and exploitation more broadly?
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The answer may lie in a concept introduced nearly 40 years ago by criminologist Nils Christie. The "ideal victim" is the notion that we're more willing to view some people as victims than others. Christie suggested various criteria that make people more likely to receive the social label of "victim": including that they're weaker than the perpetrator; that they're carrying out a respectable project at the time of the harm occurring; and that their general behaviour is blameless - namely, they were doing nothing illegal nor putting themselves at risk.
In this analysis, it should be obvious that Patrick, Paul, Lorraine and Jack are all non-ideal victims. Most have been in prison, some multiple times, and all regularly commit crimes by taking drugs or earning money in illegal (drug running, stealing) or semi-legal (sex work) ways. In contrast, Piotr does none of these things.
But while social bias goes against viewing Patrick, Paul, Lorraine and Jack as victims, empirical data tells us otherwise. Studies show that "engagement in offending behaviour is one of the strongest correlates of victimisation". Substance abuse in particular is recognised to put people at greater risk of becoming victims of crime.
Yet the support workers I interviewed make it clear that, in general, their homeless clients are not asked about their various criminal activities. Their rationale varied: some felt that asking probing questions about these activities might harm their relationship, making clients suspicious of their motives and damaging their ability to support them. Others felt it was simply none of their business how or whether clients earned money illegally, either because of their perceived remit of their work, or because they viewed the activities as distasteful or shameful.
Drinking alcohol was safe to ask about, as was working in legal sectors like car garages - but not heroin, not crack cocaine, not G, not sex work, not drug running, and so on.
Paradoxically, then, the very aspects of someone's life which may instinctively put off support workers, police, medical professionals and others from viewing them as possible victims are the same aspects which make them more at risk of victimisation.
Compounding this, Piotr is not British while all the others are. There is very limited data on exploitation in the homelessness community but, according to information published by the charities Unseen and The Passage , most people who are identified as victims of exploitation have been migrants. Two-thirds of those highlighted by the latter have "no recourse to public funds", a particularly precarious form of migration status which bans people from accessing benefits and other forms of social assistance.
In theory, this should have meant that my investigation - which excluded anyone in that precarious category, solely interviewing British people or migrants who have the same protections as UK citizens - wouldn't have easily found victims. But when I spent lots of time getting to know people living on the streets of Edinburgh, I found this wasn't the case.
That doesn't mean Unseen or The Passage are wrong in their activities or data, far from it. Victimisation is not a zero-sum game: multiple categories of homeless people can be at especially high risk. Rather, it brings an additional population into view for deeper consideration.
Following Christie's concept, academics have considered how migration and victimhood intersect, noting that migrants' perceived "weakness, frailty and passivity" aligns with the ideal victim idea. On exploitation specifically, a great deal of research and action has taken place to highlight the ways in which the UK's "hostile environment" migration policy renders migrants vulnerable to exploitation.
This combination of perception and policy makes it plausible that homeless people of foreign origin are more easily recognised as victims than people who have remained in the area in which they grew up, like the Scottish people encountered in my investigation - and especially those exhibiting some of the other "unideal" factors I've described.
What does this mean?
The finding that addiction is an important driver of exploitation among the homeless community offers guidance for targeted intervention. People who are homeless and have substance dependencies should be considered higher risk for exploitation than people who are homeless without addictions.
While there are many factors which contribute to victimisation, and this article is the product of a broader body of research , it does offer a strong indication of one place we should look for harm.
Second, police and other frontline services should consider biases that may be blinding them to some victims, specifically British people with offending records.
Third, my investigation points to a broader question: if addiction is driving vulnerability to exploitation, what does this mean for drug and alcohol policy? In England, funding of local council addiction services has halved over the past ten years ; while in Scotland as well as England and Wales , the high rate of drug-related deaths demonstrates a desperate need for more intervention.
Meanwhile, the National Police Chiefs' county lines policing strategy for 2024-2027 doesn't mention addiction even once. There is a glaring need for a better-funded, more joined-up approach to understanding and addressing addiction, thereby reducing exploitation crimes.
Going further, one useful response could be the UK-wide introduction of "safe consumption rooms", whose main purpose is to reduce drug-related harms including contamination and overdose. After much political debate, the first such facility in Scotland, called the Thistle and located in Glasgow , opened on January 13 2025.
In the context of exploitation, these safe consumption rooms could remove the obstacle of illegality from identification. In a space in which drug-taking is explicit, people may feel safer to disclose harm, and support workers may feel safer to probe into people's lifestyles.
This builds on my forthcoming study, to be published in a collection from Amsterdam University Press . It shows how health clinics and social spaces that are explicitly run by and for sex workers, and which have no links to policing, are able to identify victims of exploitation who have otherwise gone unnoticed or avoided sharing their victimisation out of fear of being criminalised, because of their involvement with the sex industry or their migration statuses. By creating safe spaces free from judgement or criminalisation, we open new opportunities for support.
Being able to regulate drugs by decriminalising them may also be beneficial. It would not remove the problem - alcohol is legal and Piotr was still exploited - but it could blunt the instrumentalisation of addiction by would-be exploiters, making it harder to construct "drug debt bondage" like that experienced by Jack, and more difficult to hold the threat of imposed withdrawal over victims, as experienced by Patrick.
But, regardless of which policy levers exist, successive UK governments' track records on tackling modern slavery do not bode well. While they purport to take "anti-slavery" action , they have consistently sidestepped the policies which construct vulnerability to exploitation in the first place. From maintaining visas that push migrants into domestic slavery to restricting benefits and pushing impoverished people into the arms of abusers, one hand creates what the other purports to tackle.
So far, the Labour government appears to be continuing this disappointing track record. In its election manifesto, it pledged to introduce "a new offence of criminal exploitation of children, to go after the gangs who are luring young people into violence and crime". But this reinforces the "ideal victim" problem: children are innocents, but what of their adult, addicted counterparts? And what about the drug policies underlying this illicit economy?
Since taking office, and as we approach the ten-year anniversary of the UK's "world-leading" Modern Slavery Act, the government has committed to a "holistic victim-centred approach ", but there is no indication that this will include people like Patrick, Paul and Jack.
We have known the factors driving modern slavery for years. This investigation provides more evidence that we must address drug policy and addiction support as part of any effective strategy to reduce the deeply damaging effects of exploitation.
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Emily Kenway receives funding from the University of Edinburgh and is on the boards of National Ugly Mugs (trustee) and the New Economy Organisers Network (chair). She is the author of Who Cares: The Hidden Crisis of Caregiving, and How We Solve It (Headline, 2023), which was a finalist for the Orwell Prize for Political Writing.
