Who is vulnerable

Anyone can become a victim of modern slavery, but exploiters deliberately target people whose circumstances make them easier to control and less likely to seek help.

Common vulnerability factors

• Poverty and debt: someone desperate for work is more likely to accept a job offer that sounds too good to be true, and to stay when conditions turn out to be abusive.
• Insecure immigration status: exploiters use the threat of reporting someone to the authorities as a means of control, even when the victim has done nothing wrong.
• Language barriers: a person who cannot read a contract or ask for help in English depends on the very people exploiting them.
• Homelessness: offers of accommodation with work attached are a well known recruitment route.
• Learning disabilities and mental ill health: exploiters seek out people who may not fully understand their situation or be believed if they speak up.
• Age: children and young people are targeted for criminal and sexual exploitation, and care leavers are at particular risk.
• Isolation: people far from family and friends, or deliberately cut off from them, have no one to turn to.

Vulnerability is engineered, not just found

Exploiters do not only find vulnerable people, they create vulnerability. They confiscate passports, impose debts, control housing and transport, and isolate victims from anyone who might help. A person who arrived in the UK independent and hopeful can be made dependent within weeks.

It follows that a victim's situation is never their fault. Nobody consents to slavery. Even where a person originally agreed to travel or to take a job, deception and coercion about the true conditions mean the exploitation is still a crime.