Welcome news on joint enterprise
News that the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) will set up a pilot scheme to record data on the age, race, sex and disability of those prosecuted under the joint enterprise doctrine is a welcome, if small, step in the right direction.
Back in 2012, the House of Commons Justice Committee recommended that the CPS should start recording and monitoring data on joint enterprise prosecutions. The CPS has been stalling and stonewalling ever since.
Following the threat of legal action by the campaign group JENGbA (Joint Enterprise Not Guilty by Association), working with Liberty, the CPS has finally agreed to a pilot scheme.
The Centre for Crime and Justice Studies has worked closely with JENGbA for a number of years. Our 2016 Dangerous Associations report, produced in partnership with JENGbA and researchers Patrick Williams and Becky Clarke of Manchester Metropolitan University offered a troubling exposé of joint enterprise prosecutions targeting black and minority ethnic people, based on racism, rumour and innuendo.
Last year, our Usual Suspects report suggested that Black and minority ethnic people continued to be over-represented in joint enterprise prosecutions. We also found no discernible impact of a 2016 Supreme Court ruling, which found that joint enterprise rules had been wrongly applied for more than thirty year.
Speaking today, our Director, Richard Garside, said:
We welcome this grudging, small step by the CPS. But it will be important too that the government commits to act on any evidence of disproportionate use of joint enterprise prosecutions the monitoring exercise uncovers.