Why ECO Exists
The launch of Ending Coercive Offending (ECO) is rooted in a hard truth: one of the most entrenched injustices facing marginalised children is not hidden. It is visible, well-documented, and widely understood—and yet it continues.
Across the UK, children who are groomed, coerced, and controlled into offending are still being held criminally responsible for actions they were forced to carry out. This injustice does not persist because professionals lack knowledge. We know how exploitation works. We understand coercion, fear, violence, and control. The injustice persists because punitive systems are repeatedly allowed to override safeguarding principles—even when children’s exploitation is acknowledged.
As a result, children exploited through violence and organised criminality are routinely
Framed as threats rather than victims
Subjected to lifelong criminal records
Locked out of education, employment, and long-term stability.
This response does not interrupt exploitation. It entrenches it. Criminalisation compounds harm rather than addressing it. It deepens children’s exclusion, increases vulnerability, and reinforces the very conditions that exploitation feeds on. Once a child has been criminalised, the system often treats that status as confirmation of risk, rather than evidence of harm done to them. ECO was established because this has to change.
Statutory systems are structurally resistant to transformation. They are designed to manage risk, protect institutions, and maintain order — not to challenge their own foundations. As a result, they are slow to reform, punishment-orientated, and deeply cautious about change that disrupts established power or practice. This is where philanthropy matters.
Philanthropy has the freedom — and the responsibility — to do what statutory systems cannot. It can:
Fund system disruption, not just service delivery
Back organisations willing to name injustice clearly and publicly
Create the conditions for structural, long-term change
ECO does not exist to make existing systems more comfortable or more efficient at processing harm. We exist to make them accountable. Our work is about shifting the frame—from seeing exploited children as offenders to recognising them as victims of coercion, violence, and systemic failure. That requires courage, independence, and a willingness to challenge practices that are deeply embedded and institutionally defended.
ECO is deliberately positioned to align with funders and partners committed to:
Justice reform
Tackling structural inequality
Violence prevention
Advancing children’s rights
We are not interested in marginal adjustments that leave core injustices intact. Lasting change does not come from accommodating power — it comes from challenging it.
ECO exists to name harm, disrupt harmful systems, and insist that safeguarding means exactly that: protecting children, not criminalising them.
If you want to support us and help us secure our vision, please get in touch at www.ecocic.com
Written by: ECO