Cuckooing

Cuckooing describes situations where: 

• A person’s home is taken over or controlled by others
• Control is achieved through exploitation, coercion, manipulation, or fear
• The victim experiences reduced autonomy, safety, and ability to sustain their tenancy

Cuckooing may involve criminal activity, but often involves non-criminal exploitation, opportunism, and can begin subtly and include, emotional abuse, financial and material exploitation, and forced dependency. 

A narrow definition risks excluding victims whose experiences do not align with county lines models. It’s important therefore to adopt a broad, vulnerability focused definition, and recognise the different language used to describe forms of cuckooing 

Research and practice identify multiple overlapping forms of cuckooing: 

• Organised / County Lines cuckooing – involving criminal networks
• Localised or opportunistic cuckooing – often initially based on need or informal arrangements, but becomes exploitative 
• Quasi cuckooing – victiminitially consents to the perpetrator entering the property 
• Parasitic nest invasion - perpetrator enters the victim’s property with false pretence or force 
• Gendered cuckooing / Coupling – perpetrators take over homes of victims to control, abuse and exploit them. Often reflective of gendered based violence and coercive control. Predominately affects women. 
• Reoccurring cuckooing - criminals or perpetrators repeatedly take over a person’s home despite interventions or previous incidents.  

These typologies often coexist within a single case and should not be treated as mutually exclusive.