Coercive Control Field Check / CRIM
Category 12
Coerced Criminality
Two related mechanisms that manufacture official vulnerability: forcing the target into crime, then holding the exposure as leverage; and compelling participation in or concealment of harm to children, then presenting that inability as the target's own culpability.
Bettinson 2022, 2024; Centre for Women's Justice 2022; Hope & Swaine Williams 2025; Katz 2016, 2022; Prison Reform Trust 2017; Warshaw et al. 2014; Douglas & Walsh 2010.
CRIM-1
Coerced Participation in Crime
Forcing, compelling, pressuring, or arranging for the target to commit a criminal offense, to take responsibility for the abuser's offense, or to remain in a position of criminal exposure that the abuser then uses as leverage.
CRIM-2
Forced Participation in, or Concealment of, Harm to Children
The abuser compels the target to take part in, witness, enable, or conceal harm to a child (physical, sexual, emotional, or neglect), or sets conditions that prevent the target from protecting the child, then treats that inability as the target's own failure.
Literature this family is drawn from
- Bettinson, V. (2022). A comparative analysis of the defence of duress in England and Wales and Scotland: Implications for victims of coercive control. Journal of Criminal Law.
Forums that enumerate this family
A statute that lists a tactic is not a finding that the tactic is present.
Carlton, C. (2026). Coercive Control Field Check: CRIM Coerced Criminality. Coercive Control Observatory. Last reviewed August 31, 2026.