Joint enterprise is a doctrine of criminal law which permits two or more defendants to be convicted of the same criminal offence in relation to the same incident, even where the levels and nature of involvement in the incident were different.

Joint enterprise has received sustained criticism because of the way these laws have been shown to disproportionately criminalise those from working class communities and from ethnic minority communities, particularly the Black community.

This research 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.

Published in April 2022 by the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies.