My Private Members’ Bill to end the injustice of Joint Enterprise: no contribution, no conviction

Written By Kim Johnson

Joined by Gloria Morrison, one of the co-founders of JENGbA, after I presented my Joint Enterprise (Significant Contribution) Private Members Bill

My Bill – Joint Enterprise (Significant Contribution) aims to tighten up the law on Joint Enterprise. This law is used to prosecute someone who “assists or encourages” an offence – and if found guilty, they are punished as harshly as if they had been the principal offender, which can lead to life imprisonment.

According to many legal experts, the problem is that Joint Enterprise is used in a much wider way, often convicting people who have made no significant contribution to a crime.

The Supreme Court ruled in 2016 (R vs Jogee) that the law had indeed taken a “wrong turn” for over 30 years. The Court rightly restored the proper law of intention so that those who intend to commit or assist a serious crime can be properly convicted. A “moment of genuine legal history”, according to the BBC.

In response, since 2016 there is a new legal problem where juries are deliberately not told to consider the contribution a person made to the crime. This absence of legal direction risks convicting people who make no significant contribution to a crime.

It has been used to convict young people seen fighting, but not with the victim, young people who are not present at the scene, women who have no control over their boyfriend’s conduct and young people who listen to certain kinds of music, where trials focus on character and culture and not contribution to a crime.

For some, this means they are serving a life sentence for an offence to which they made no significant contribution and where the minimum term, before they can apply for parole, is longer than they had been alive.

Campaigners have long argued that joint enterprise is also used in a racist way by prosecutors.

Ministers admit that “convictions based on joint enterprise appear from some studies to affect BAME groups disproportionately” and that “there is some concern that the existing case law does operate in a harsh way on certain young black boys and men”.

With the help of Liberty, campaign group JENGbA (Joint Enterprise Not Guilty by Association) launched legal action last year against the Crown Prosecution Service over its refusal to collect data on the use of joint enterprise. Under pressure, the CPS agreed to a pilot study of six months of data-collection – and, in September, released the results.

As anticipated the data showed that joint enterprise disproportionately targeted racialised minorities, especially young black men. In fact, black people are 16 times more likely than white people to be charged with homicide or attempted homicide under joint enterprise, according to the data.

I became aware of joint enterprise after watching Jimmy McGovern’s shocking and powerful drama Common in 2014.

Since being elected in 2019, I’ve met with JENGbA a grass root campaign set up in 2010, who are in contact with over 1,000 families of people imprisoned as a result of joint enterprise laws. The more I speak with families and learn about joint enterprise the more outraged I become.

Young people’s lives shouldn’t be destroyed by incarceration for crimes for which they made no significant contribution. A miscarriage of law is still a miscarriage of justice and I hope to rectify this long-standing legal problem with my Bill.

My Bill has been drafted by legal experts for JENGbA, and it receives its second reading on 2nd February.

A case study on the injustice of Joint Enterprise: Manchester 10

In summer of 2022, 10 Black youngsters stood trial in Manchester were sentenced to a total of 131 years for conspiracy to murder and to cause GBH. Not all were present at the two violent events that occurred, but because of their association with others – through school, through church, through a Telegram app – were convicted under Joint Enterprise.

The prosecution called police officers as ‘experts’ to provide evidence on “gang culture” which has no legal definition, but has the potential to emotively sway a journey. Drill music was used as evidence of intent to cause violence. The growing use of the “gang” narrative effectively criminalises culture and has led to Black youth being 16 times more likely to be prosecuted for murder or attempted murder under Joint Enterprise than their white peers.

Kim Johnson
Previous

The MPs backing my Bill to Reform Joint Enterprise
Next

Joint Enterprise (Significant Contribution) Bill