Joint Enterprise: You Don't Have to Hold the Weapon to Face the Consequences
- Pathways Project
- Jul 7
- 4 min read
Updated: 2 days ago
You don't have to throw a punch to be convicted of murder. You don't have to carry a weapon. Under joint enterprise, you don't even have to intend for anyone to get hurt. You just have to have been there — and a jury decide that you could have seen it coming.
Many young people in this country have never heard of this. Most find out for the first time in a courtroom.
What Joint Enterprise Actually Is
Joint enterprise, formally known as secondary liability, is a legal doctrine that allows more than one person to be convicted of the same serious offence — even when only one person carried it out.
Under joint enterprise, a young person can be convicted of murder if they were present during the offence, if they assisted or encouraged the events leading to it, or if a jury decides they foresaw that serious violence resulting in death was a possibility. Even if they did not want it to happen, did not carry a weapon, and did not throw a punch. That last element is the one that catches young people out. Not intent. Not action. Foresight.
The question a jury is asked is not "did they do it?" It's "could they have seen it coming?"
In 2016, the Supreme Court ruling in R v Jogee raised the threshold from foresight to intention — a partial reform of how joint enterprise is applied. In practice, prosecutions continued. The campaign group JENGbA — Joint Enterprise Not Guilty by Association — is currently supporting over 1,500 prisoners convicted under the doctrine, the majority serving mandatory life sentences for offences committed by others.
The Group Chat Problem
Joint enterprise does not only apply to physical presence, it extends to digital association — and this is where the doctrine becomes particularly relevant for young people today.
Being in a group chat where violence is planned or discussed, and not leaving, can be used as evidence of participation. As can being tagged in a video that glorifies violence, or being seen to react to content that celebrates harm. All of these create a digital footprint that, in the context of a serious offence, a prosecution can use to argue association and foresight.
A joke sent in a group chat at 11pm on a Tuesday can appear in a Crown Court as exhibit A on a Monday morning.
Most young people, and many adults, do not understand this. The line between banter and evidence is thinner than anyone assumes, and the consequences of crossing it aren't recoverable.
Who It Affects — and How Unevenly
The racial disproportionality in joint enterprise convictions is documented across two decades of data. A report published by the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies in April 2026, drawing on Home Office and CPS data from 2005 to 2024, found that Black defendants have on average made up 25% of those convicted of homicide in multi-defendant cases — despite Black people comprising around 4% of the general population.
Black people convicted of homicide are three times more likely than white people to be convicted as part of a group case. The report identifies gang narratives and racialised assumptions in prosecution decision-making as key drivers of that disparity.
The Supreme Court ruling in 2016 made no discernible difference. The demographic profile of those convicted — predominantly young, male, and disproportionately from Black and minority ethnic backgrounds — has remained consistent throughout.
This is not coincidental. Joint enterprise is applied most frequently in cases involving groups of young people in urban areas — the same young people who are disproportionately stopped and searched, disproportionately charged rather than cautioned, and disproportionately represented at every stage of the criminal justice system. Joint enterprise does not create that inequality. But it amplifies it.
A young person from an affluent background who finds themselves at the edge of a serious incident has, statistically, a different relationship with the legal system than a young Black man from a more deprived area in the same situation. The law is the same. Its application is not.
What Schools Can Do
The most effective response to joint enterprise is the same as the most effective response to county lines recruitment, to knife carrying, and to gang involvement: knowledge, delivered early, by someone the young person can actually hear.
Young people who understand joint enterprise make different decisions. Not because the information frightens them into compliance — fear-based approaches have consistently weak evidence — but because understanding a system changes how you navigate it. A young person who knows that staying in a group chat, or not walking away from a situation they can see escalating, carries legal consequences is a young person who is equipped to make a different choice.
That knowledge isn't complicated, but needs to be delivered in a way that lands — in language that connects, by someone whose credibility comes from experience rather than authority. The young people most likely to be affected by joint enterprise are the least likely to encounter it in a standard curriculum. Reaching them requires something different from a standard lesson.
Where Pathways Comes In
Grounded, specific, and immediately applicable, our Joint Enterprise workshops are delivered by credible messengers — people who understand the environments where these situations unfold — that can plainly explain how joint enterprise works in practice without losing the room. The workshop can be delivered as a standalone session or as part of our broader Legal Literacy programme.
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