AN MP has launched a private members bill in a bid to tighten up the law on joint enterprise.

Campaigners have long argued that joint enterprise has been used in a racially discriminatory way by prosecutors. And a number of studies appear to confirm the claim that convictions based on joint enterprise appear to disproportionately affect boys and young men  from Black and minority ethnic groups.

Kim Johnson,  MP for Liverpool Riverside,  plans to introduce a Private Members Bill which will clarify aspects of the law that lead to innocent people being convicted.

The bill is due to receive its second reading in the Commons today (Friday February 2).

Joint enterprise is used to prosecute someone who intentionally “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.

Concerns

In some situations this is reasonable. But in recent years concerns have grown among legal experts and campaigners that the law on joint enterprise is being used in a wider way often convicting people who have made no significant contribution to a crime.

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.

The Supreme Court ruled in 2016 that the law had taken a “wrong turn”. Johnson said she was determined to change the joint enterprise law.

The more I speak with families and learn about joint enterprise the more outraged I become. It is an approach that turns the law on its head – one that assumes guilt before innocence

Kim Johnson MP

She said: “Since being elected in 2019, I’ve met with  JENGbA a grass roots campaign set up in 2010, who are in contact with over 1,000 families of people imprisoned as a result of joint enterprise laws, with a disproportionate number of young black teens – who have been wrongly convicted under a method of joint enterprise that was used to convict people who foresaw a crime but did not intend to join in.

“The more I speak with families and learn about joint enterprise the more outraged I become. It is an approach that turns the law on its head – one that assumes guilt before innocence and criminalises guilt by association.

“I’m proud to take forward my Joint Enterprise (Significant Contribution) Bill, which has been drafted by legal experts for JENGbA.”

Johnson added: “If passed, it would allow us to separate those who should be long-term prisoners from those who should not. It also complements recent Government measures to reduce the prison population.

“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 my Bill will wipe this stain off our justice system once and for all.”