Section 45 of the Modern Slavery Act 2015 provides a defence for human trafficking victims charged with some criminal offences. One of the requirements for the defence is that ‘a reasonable person in the same situation as the person and having the person’s relevant characteristics would have no realistic alternative to doing that act’.
Operation Glenlivet is described in the Human Trafficking Handbook as follows: a Romanian male, who had been trafficked to the UK to commit theft on a daily basis, had been caught by security staff during an ‘overt and hamfisted attempt at shoplifting’ on Oxford Street. The security staff initially wanted him to simply return the goods and let him go, but he pleaded with them to call the police. When uniformed officers arrived, the Romanian requested that they help him.[1] His example provides an extreme illustration of when the ‘no realistic alternative’ threshold would be satisfied. His daily movements and communications were controlled and he felt he had no other means to contact the police.
Yet it should not be assumed that a trafficking victim, who potentially could have phoned the police or ran away, has a realistic alternative to committing a criminal offence.
UK Human Trafficking Law Blog 