Seeing the Child Clearly: Why Criminalisation Causes Harm and Belonging Creates Safety

At ECO, we work from a clear and unwavering position: children who have experienced harm, exploitation, and adversity should not be further harmed by the systems meant to protect them. Yet criminalisation continues to be used as a response to children whose behaviour reflects unmet need rather than criminal intent. 

This approach is not neutral. It is harmful. And it is often criminogenic—increasing the likelihood of further system involvement, exclusion, and trauma. 

The work of Kendra Houseman and Out of the Shadows powerfully exposes why. 

Kendra Houseman founded Out of the Shadows in 2016 to ensure that conversations about child exploitation, harm, and safeguarding are grounded in lived experience, not professional distance. Kendra challenges dominant narratives that frame children as risky, non-compliant, or offenders rather than as children responding to unsafe contexts. 

Out of the Shadows exists to disrupt practice that relies on labels, thresholds, and punitive control, and instead centres the reality of children’s lives—including fear, coercion, survival strategies, and fractured trust in adults. 

This approach closely aligns with ECO’s values: context matters, behaviour communicates need, and children must be protected from further harm—including system-generated harm. 

One of the most striking aspects of Kendra’s work is her refusal to detach emotionally from children once systems intervene. In a powerful blog, she reflects on writing a letter to a young man she had supported years earlier, now in prison. Rather than distancing herself, she chose connection — recognising the continuity of care even when the system had moved to punishment. 

That act stands in quiet but powerful opposition to a justice culture that treats criminalisation as an endpoint rather than a point of reflection. It reminds us that children do not stop being worthy of care when they are criminalised, and that severing relationships often compounds harm. 

At ECO we recognise how exclusionary responses—arrests, charges, school exclusions, prosecution—reduce safety rather than enhance it. 

Children affected by exploitation, county lines, serious violence, or contextual harm are frequently criminalised for behaviours that are directly shaped by coercion, fear, and survival. Carrying weapons, transporting drugs, or associating with exploitative adults are too often treated as evidence of choice rather than indicators of risk. 

Criminalisation strips behaviour of its context. 

It: 

• reinforces stigma and shame 

• embeds children deeper into harmful networks 

• damages trust in professionals 

• and escalates system involvement 

This is why ECO and Out of the Shadows both argue that punitive responses to exploited children do not reduce harm—they reproduce it. 

Out of the Shadows’ training and consultancy offer professionals something essential: an honest confrontation with how systems can unintentionally harm children. 

Their work supports practitioners to: 

• understand exploitation from a child’s perspective, not an adult or legal one 

• recognise how trauma, coercion, and context shape behaviour 

• move away from compliance-driven practice towards relationship-based safeguarding 

This mirrors ECO's commitment to challenging coercive systems and supporting leaders and practitioners to act with courage rather than defaulting to risk-averse punishment. 

Both organisations are clear: belonging is not a “soft” option—it is a protective one. 

Children who feel seen, heard, and supported are more likely to engage, disclose harm, and accept help. Criminalisation does the opposite. It isolates, labels, and reinforces narratives of rejection that exploited children already know too well. 

Safeguarding must be rooted in connection, not control. 

The over-criminalisation of children is not inevitable. It is the product of professional cultures, policy decisions, and leadership choices. 

Kendra Houseman’s work through Out of the Shadows challenges us to confront uncomfortable truths about how systems respond to harm—and whose voices are prioritised in those responses. At ECO we share that challenge. 

If we are serious about child protection, exploitation prevention, and community safety, we must stop using criminalisation as a substitute for care. 

Children deserve systems that see them clearly—and respond accordingly. 

Written by: ECO