The ongoing injustice of joint enterprise prosecutions

Helen talked about our recent work looking at joint enterprise convictions, including current trends in prosecution. She made three main points in her presentation.

First, it is impossible to get accurate data on how many people have been prosecuted under joint enteprise principles. So we have to chop the data as best we can. We estimate that between 2005 and 2016, around 4,500 people where convicted for homicide under joint enterprise rules.

Second, young black men were overrepresented in joint enterprise prosecutions. Twenty-six per cent of those convicted of homicide in cases involving four or more defendants were Black. Whatever the intentions, the effect of joint enterprise prosecutions appears to be highly discriminatory.

Third, despite the Supreme Court ruling in 2016 that joint enterprise rules had been wrongly applied for 30 years, we found no evidence that the ruling has had any discernible impact on the overall number of joint enterprise prosecutions & convictions. This is very worrying.

Our conclusion from this: there is an urgent need for further reform. This includes:

• tightening up further on how the rules are applied, and
• changing the law – as JENGbA are arguing – to make it a lot easier for those wrongly convicted to gain their freedom.

We will be publishing our findings a bit later in the spring. In the meantime, you can read Helen's presentation, and download her slides, here.