Criminal's art promoted in force (9)
I believe the answer is:
constrain
'force' is the definition.
(thesaurus)
'criminal's art promoted in' is the wordplay.
'criminal's' becomes 'cons' (abbreviation for 'convict').
'promoted' shows that the letters should be reversed in order (going up, in a down clue).
'art' in reverse letter order is 'tra'.
'cons'+'tra'+'in'='CONSTRAIN'
(Other definitions for constrain that I've seen before include "Check" , "Severely restrict" , "Restrict the extent of" , "Compel; constrict" , "Confine, limit" .)