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Research: Challenging the injustice of joint enterprise
Exposing discriminatory collective punishments to work towards a fairer criminal justice system.
Summary
Research summary
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2014 – ongoing
This series of collaborative projects challenges the use of joint enterprise, using a range of research findings and personal stories to call for change in the criminal justice system.
Our work seeks to evidence how and why these policing and prosecution strategies are being used, and in doing so surface the real likelihood of miscarriages of justice in such cases.
Researchers examined the experiences and case histories of 240 prisoners for the Dangerous Associations study. Their findings highlight how joint enterprise disproportionately targets people from racialised communities, often children and young men from the black community.
In the Stories of Injustice study, researchers found that three quarters of convictions of girls and women under joint enterprise since 2006 were for murder or manslaughter. This is despite 90% of the girls and women engaging in no violence, and in almost half of the cases not being present at the scene.
These studies show how policing and prosecution strategies reinforce racism, patriarchy and class stigma – with the racialised gang narrative and misogynistic tropes central to the process of criminalisation in these joint enterprise cases.
![An illustrated fist bearing the words: change, crime, freedom, profit, racism, truth, criminalisation, justice, legitimacy, power, revolution, campaigns, legitimacy, patriarchy, activism, hegemony, othering, structures, freedom, marginalisation and resistance.](https://www.mmu.ac.uk/sites/default/files/styles/max_width_height_1000px/public/2022-02/Sites%20of%20Resistance%20logo.jpg?itok=ockJX94f)
Research outputs
Academic papers
- Williams, P, and Clarke, B (2016) Dangerous Associations: Joint enterprise, Gangs and Racism London: Centre for Crime and Justice Studies
- Williams, P, and Clarke, B (2018) Contesting the single story: Collective punishments, myth-making and racialised criminalisation in Poynting, S, Bhatia, M, and Tufail, W, (eds) Racism, Crime and Media. Palgrave
- Williams, P, and Clarke, B (2018) The Black Criminal Other as an Object of Social Control Social Sciences, 7(11), pp 234
- Clarke, B, and Williams, P (2020) (Re)producing Guilt in Suspect Communities: An analysis of the centrality of negative racialisation in joint enterprise prosecution narratives International Journal of Criminal Justice and Social Democracy, 9(3), pp 116-129
- Clarke, B, and Chadwick, K (2020) Stories of Injustice: The criminalisation of women convicted under joint enterprise laws Manchester: Sites of Resistance
- Clarke, B (2023) Joint enterprise, ‘gangs’ and racism: time to halt this continued injustice, Institute of Race Relations
- Clarke, B, and Chadwick, K (2023) The Criminalisation of Women in Joint Enterprise Cases: Exposing the Limits to ‘Serving’ Girls and Women Justice International Journal for Crime, Justice and Social Democracy, 12(4), pp80-91
Dangerous Associations
Watch our documentary to learn more about the unfair use of joint enterprise in our criminal justice system.Team
Research team
Lead researchers
Collaborating with:
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JENGbA - the Joint Enterprise – Not Guilty by Association campaign
Contact
Contact us
For general enquiries about our research theme, The Justice Project: Sites of Resistance, you can contact its leads Becky Clarke or Dr Patrick Williams.