The role of Leadership in Ending Coercive Offending

In the UK, growing awareness of child criminal exploitation has not yet translated into meaningful protection for many of the children affected by it. Too often, children who have been groomed, threatened, indebted, or controlled are still processed primarily as offenders rather than safeguarded as victims of coercion. This is not a gap in knowledge; it is a gap in leadership. 

As professionals that have worked across safeguarding, justice, education, and community services what we see repeatedly is not a lack of concern for children—but systems that to often prioritise criminal justice outcomes above welfare responses. When this happens at scale, responsibility sits not with individual practitioners, but with leadership. 

Children do not need to be physically restrained to be coerced. Exploitation operates through fear, loyalty, obligation, shame, and survival. Many children who come int connection with the criminal justice system have experienced: 

• Threats to themselves or their families 

• Debt bondage linked to drugs, transport, or accommodation 

• Grooming through affection, status, or protection 

• Persistent surveillance and control by older perpetrators 

• Realistic fear of serious harm if they disengage 

Yet too often the language of “choice”, “risk-taking”, and “criminality” remains embedded in professional decision-making. When coercion is minimised, the criminal justice response becomes not only inappropriate, but actively harmful—reinforcing trauma, mistrust, and powerlessness. 

Leadership matters here because language shapes outcomes. When leaders allow coercion to be reframed as poor decision-making by a child, criminalisation becomes inevitable. The criminalisation of exploited children is rarely the result of one poor decision. It emerges from a series of structurally predictable steps: 

• Policing priorities that favour disruption over safeguarding 

• Risk thresholds that frame exploitation as “context” rather than causation 

• Charging decisions made without full exploitation analysis 

• Multi-agency forums where responsibility is diffused, and challenge is muted 

• Organisational fear of scrutiny, blame, or reputational damage 

When these patterns repeat across local areas, they cannot be dismissed as anomalies. They are system outputs, and systems are the responsibility of leadership. Leadership accountability is not about fault or blame. It is about owning the impact of the systems you oversee. 

Accountable leaders are willing to ask difficult questions, such as: 

• Why are exploited children in our area more likely to be arrested than protected? 

• At what point does safeguarding lose authority to enforcement—and why? 

• Who has the power to stop a prosecution? 

• What data would challenge our assumptions if we were prepared to look at it? 

Without leadership willing to confront these questions, frontline practice is constrained, however skilled or compassionate professionals may be. 

ECO is asking leaders to take action across five critical areas: 

1. Decision-Making Power 

Safeguarding must have real authority at the point of arrest, charge, and prosecution. Exploitation cannot remain a mitigating factor raised after harm is done. 

2. Legal Confidence and Support 

Existing protections—non-prosecution principles, public interest tests, and modern slavery frameworks—are underused. Leaders must ensure professionals are trained, supported, and protected when they apply them. 

3. Data Transparency 

If leaders do not routinely review data on exploited children who are arrested, charged, remanded, or sentenced, accountability is impossible. What is not measured cannot be challenged.  We also ask that this data is shared to enable challenge and demonstration of progress when it happens. 

4. Cultural Permission to Challenge 

Multi-agency working only protects children when challenge is expected, not penalised. Leaders set the tone for whether safeguarding voices can interrupt criminal justice momentum. 

5. Narrative Leadership 

How leaders speak about exploited children matters. Public and internal narratives that emphasise responsibility over coercion reinforce criminalisation and silence professional dissent. 

If leaders want different outcomes, they must design different systems. That means moving beyond awareness and into responsibility—responsibility for thresholds, for language, for data, and for the children whose lives are shaped by institutional decisions. Ending coercive offending is not a frontline challenge, it is a leadership test. 

And children should not bear the consequences when that test is failed.