People Trafficking
Ask any housing enforcement officer charged with the task of going into rented properties unannounced and they will tell you that suspicions of accommodation being used for people trafficking run high.
People from the same country or ethnic group crammed together cheek by jowl. All very nervous and reluctant to speak to the authorities, often grabbing their coats and leaving as soon as you turn up.
Once discovered, people get moved very quickly.
Here is my evidence
About a year ago I visited a property in Leytonstone with an EHO from Waltham Forest council and found 8 people in a house, all of whom were very cautious of speaking to us about anything until they opened up about threats and thefts from the agent running the place.
We had an initial chat on the Thursday and returned to gather more information on the Tuesday to find everyone gone, replaced by a single family, similarly nervous, who swore blind they had been living there for 6 months. You don’t have to be Sherlock Holmes to work out that victims of slavery and trafficking have to live somewhere.
They are obviously not homeowners, they don’t live in council houses, squats attract too much police attention so the private rented sector is where you find them. Hiding in plain sight as it were, the same way that you see them working openly in car valeting businesses or picking cabbages in fields under the eye of gangmasters.
A landmark case was encouraging
The Police know this as well and I was initially pleased recently to see what all the papers reported as a “Landmark case” of Kashmir Singh Binning being the first recipient of a Slavery & Trafficking Risk Order.
As with all legal sanctions they didn’t just slap the order on him, like a parking ticket. That’s not how enforcement works.
It came via close joint working between Police and the local authorities of Birmingham and Sandwell councils, who identified 6 properties that he owned and another 7 owned by family members.
Two of his tenants were hospitalised and a fire safety report identified no smoke alarms of fire doors.
The council identified the properties and the Police tied them in with their anti-slavery investigation against a Polish gang by analysing Binning’s mobile phone records to show numerous conversations with convicted trafficker Ignacy Brzezinski.
Detective Sergeant Mike Wright is quoted as saying
“This order shows how seriously we and the courts take the safeguarding of vulnerable people”
and going on to say
“ I hope this order shows we will not allow landlords to put their tenants at risk and facilitate slavery offences.”
However…
Good joint working there on everyone’s behalf, the gang of eight individuals were jailed for a total of 55 years but then I read down the story and saw what sanctions had been imposed on the landlord as a result of this ‘Landmark’ case.
The Slavery & Trafficking Risk Order imposed upon Binning contains the following:-
- Not to accept cash payments from tenants
- To agree to the local authority carrying out 3 monthly inspections
- To provide signed tenancy agreements naming the occupiers
That’s it
The article says these sanctions “include” but they don’t report anything else, apart from having to pay the council’s legal costs of £14,000. Not to diss the work of the councils or the Police there but if those are the sanctions imposed, what sort of deterrent is that?
It’s not as if they just fell across him and gave him the benefit of the doubt. He had been approached by Police in 2016 and received visits from the local authorities who also warned him to stop allowing his properties to be used for trafficking but he didn’t take the advice.
DS Wright is also quoted as saying
“He claimed he had no idea people housed in his properties were being exploited… but all the evidence suggested otherwise.”
And in an article covering the story on the BBC DS Wright is quoted as saying Binning’s role:-
“Was pivotal to the gang being able to house victims easily and affordably.”
And yet he is still allowed to operate as a landlord. No banning order, not even a fine.
Surely this is not punishment?
I felt compelled to write this piece just to work out my own incredulity that a key person whose role in one of the most pernicious kinds of crime of modern times, described by the prosecuting Police as “Pivotal”, effectively gets a slap on the wrist.
Perhaps there are sentencing guidelines governing Slavery & Trafficking Risk Orders but if I were any of the officers involved in this one I would be very disappointed with that result and wonder where we are at as a society if these are the sorts of punishments we can expect for slavery these days.
There are two types of orders::Slavery and Trafficking Prevention Orders (STPO) and Slavery and Trafficking Risk Orders (STRO). The former are for people who have been convicted of a slavery offence. The latter for those who for some reason have not been convicted.
From the government guidance:
STPOs are aimed at those convicted, cautioned, who received a reprimand or final warning, found not guilty by reason of insanity, or found to be under a disability and to have done the act charged (i.e. if someone can’t be put on trial in the usual way because they are not fit to plead/stand trial but a court has found that they committed the act/offence), in respect of a slavery or human trafficking offence .
STROs are aimed at individuals who have not been convicted of a slavery or human trafficking offence.
If the police had had enough evidence to convict the landlord then then would have done so and gone for the STPO.
As it was an STRO that was given the landlord in question was not convicted. Punishing someone who has not been convicted would be a bad precedent. The order is a civil order not a criminal sentence. It is for use when a case can not be proven but there is a clear risk. Like when the evidence suggests involvement but it can not be proven beyond a reasonable doubt.
Sorry Ben, but I think you are not presenting all the facts here. Perhaps you don’t know them.
With regard to two people being injured in a property without proper fire precautions surely the local authority can prosecute for that and possibly get him fined and banned.
That there is a difference between the two types of order does not alter my view Peter. Whether he was convicted or not. The Police said his role was pivotal and he had been warned by both police and the local authority but ignored them.
That there should be a technical and legal gradation of such a thing does not change my view expressed in the final sentence on what kind of society we are who would have such an apologist approach to anyone involved in slavery.
18 months ago I did some work with Kent Police on a project, where they had realised that whenever they were dealing with properties used for trafficking, there was nearly always a letting agent involved who professed innocence but the police’s response was to treat such agents as enablers of crime under s45 of the Serious Crime Act 2015, whether they knew about the criminal use or not, a robust approach to the despicable crime that seems to be missing from the STRO/STPO nonsense
What kind of society? The sort that does not condemn someone on suspicion alone, but requires proof to convict, i.e. a just society. Clearly if the court did not think that the police had proved that the landlord was involved beyond reasonable doubt, so it had to presume that he was innocent of that. So even a handslap would be too much.
So previously he would have been able to continue as he was before, but the STRO whilst not stopping carrying out a legitimate business should make it more difficult for him to facilitate slavery if that his what he is really doing, rather that just being incompetant and naive. So it is better than the nothing that was available before.
18 months ago I did some work with Kent Police on a project, where they had realised that whenever they were dealing with properties used for trafficking, there was nearly always a letting agent involved who professed innocence but the police’s response was to treat such agents as enablers of crime under s45 of the Serious Crime Act 2015, whether they knew about the criminal use or not, a robust approach to the despicable crime that seems to be missing from the STRO/STPO nonsense
That very much sounds like guilty until proven innocent to me.
You are mistaken. To be convicted of being “enabler of crime” and punished for it a person has to be found guilty beying reasonable doubt. The police can suspect them and attempt to prove it, but they can’t punish them or put them under any form of sanction. The requirement is that a person “knows or reasonably suspects that activities in which he participates are criminal activities of an organised crime group, or will help an organised crime group to carry on criminal activities.” This is easier to prove than what was previously required, but still requires proof beyond reasonable doubt, and still can be used for someone who has no reason to suspect a crime was being committed.
The distinction between a STRO and a STPO is not nonsense. Both aim to stop someone commiting what is indeed a despicable crime. But a STRO requires a much lower level of proof. Thus it can be used more easily.