The usual suspects : Joint enterprise prosecutions before and after the Supreme Court ruling . 2nd Edition

By Helen Mills, Matt Ford and Roger Grimshaw

The usual suspects uses national data to assess the use of joint enterprise laws in prosecutions and convictions for serious violence in England and Wales over the last fifteen years. It is the first publication to track information over this significant period of years, and features up-todate figures inclusive of the period post the 2016 Supreme Court judgment, which ruled the law had taken‘a wrong turn’ for more than thirty years. In this report we use the best available data to answer questions about the scope, demographics and changes over time in the use of joint enterprise. Until it is routinely recorded when a prosecution and conviction relied on joint enterprise or secondary liability laws, these approximations are the best available sources to address such important questions.  

London: Centre for Crime and Justice Studies 2022. 24p.