Research: Challenging the injustice of joint enterprise

Research summary

• 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.