CHILD-EXIT: A Conceptual Framework for Sustainable Exit from Child Criminal Exploitation and Forced Criminality

CHILD-EXIT is a conceptual and research framework developed by CIRITS to investigate how separation from child criminal exploitation and forced criminality may become a sustainable exit over time.The framework does not introduce the general notion of sustainable exit. Its specific contribution is to formulate a child-focused, longitudinal and falsifiable architecture linking protective separation, liminal transition, functional replacement, identity transition, social recognition and reincorporation, ecological and institutional continuity, and longitudinal sustainability.It proposes a set of explicit research gaps and testable propositions intended to guide systematic evidence review, longitudinal research and future empirical evaluation.The central research question is: under what conditions does separation from forced criminality become a sustainable exit for children and adolescents, and through which mechanisms is that durability produced, weakened or reversed?CHILD-EXIT is presented as a framework under development and not as a validated intervention model.