The subject I’m about to deal with breaks my heart. It is disheartening to hear and read stories of how black people, especially young black men and boys, have been criminalised and killed throughout history – even to this day. The methods may be different, but the results are the same.
Lynching Era
So, let’s travel back to the lynching era, by first defining what lynching is; lynching is when a group of people impose a death sentence and kill someone for an alleged offence without a legal and fair trial (often by hanging).
The term supposedly comes from the American planter, military officer and judge Charles Lynch, who presided over a kangaroo court in Virginia to punish Loyalists during the Revolutionary War.
The court ignored recognized standards of law and justice, including due process, and often came to predetermined conclusions. Punishments by lynching also existed in medieval Europe, such as Cowper justice in England, where a trial took place after execution.
This type of justice was later practiced on black people in America under slavery and Jim Crow. Lynching was used as a method of control to keep black Americans in check and was supported by local police departments. These killings were a public spectacle, attended and celebrated by the white community, so much so that photos of lynchings were sold as souvenir postcards.
Modern Era
Now you might be thinking, that’s quite interesting, but what does that have to do with today? Good question. Lynching has changed from the physical killing of black boys and young men (although that may be the case in some instances) to a psychological and physical stagnation of their life potential.
This is achieved by imposing life sentences for crimes that their white counterparts may get less time or no time for. One could argue that this is a form of lynching that is even worse than the first, because in this day and age they are buried alive in the prison system.
In this article, I want to draw your attention to the modern-day lynching of black boys and young men in England through the doctrine of Joint Enterprise (JE).
Joint Enterprise
Joint Enterprise (JE) is a doctrine enshrined in English Common Law which states that if you are seen to be involved in the commission of a crime, you can be considered as guilty as the person who committed it. As such, you can be convicted of the same offence as the main offender.
Note that the phrase “being seen” does not always mean that you are involved, but that you are perceived to be involved. But let’s move on.
There are three types of JE: The first is when two or more people are equally involved in an offence, e.g. both stealing from a shop. The second is when one person encourages or helps the other to commit an offence, e.g. by keeping a lookout while the other person commits a robbery.
The final case, which is the most commonly used, is when two or more people are involved in an offence and one of them commits another offence that the others could have foreseen, e.g. one of the offenders kills the occupant in the middle of a burglary.
Unlike normal murder, where the prosecution must prove intent, this is not the case with JE; which is much broader and allows someone to be convicted of murder if they foresaw that another member of the group would kill or cause someone serious harm.
Where did JE come from
The doctrine dates back to the 1846 case of R v Swindall and Osborne , in which two cart drivers were in a race. One of them ran over and killed a pedestrian. As it was not known which of them had done it, they were held jointly liable.
In principle, JE is a sensible doctrine if it is applied correctly and on a case-by-case basis. However, it becomes problematic when it is largely misused against a particular group of people. Today, black boys and young men are in prison serving life sentences, not because they committed or participated in a crime, but because they are associated with the perpetrator(s).
In other words, they were “seen” to be involved because of this association and somehow having magical powers to see into the future and predict other people’s actions.
JE Statistics
Studies and statistics have shown that JE prosecutions primarily target young black men and boys. Statistics from a Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) data analysis in 2023 found that while black people make up 4% of the UK population, they account for 30% of CPS JE cases.
This means that they are 16 times more likely than white people to be prosecuted for JE and in the majority of cases they are aged between 18 to 24. London has the highest concentration of black people, and unsurprisingly, it also has the highest number of cases: 54% of defendants are black and 19% are white.
These eyebrow-raising statistics are enough to make you question how just the British Justice system really is when it comes to black men and boys because they seem to make up the majority of young male prisoners serving 15 years or more on JE convictions.
According to the human rights organisation Liberty, JE convictions are usually based on prejudiced evidence, racial stereotypes and sometimes inaccurate information. The cases are often based on weak evidence and the assumption that people are part of a ‘gang.’ This includes information about the connections, friends, families, social media use and music preferences used by the prosecution, especially against black men and boys.
In other words, these boys are locked up for life based on racial stereotypes that portray them as violent and involved in criminal activity. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that all of these boys aren’t involved in such activities or “gangs”, but you can’t convince me that the overwhelming majority of those convicted under this doctrine are criminals.
I get the impression that JE is used as a dragnet to catch anyone who is on the fringes or in any way associated with those involved in criminal activity. This bears resemblance to lynching under Jim Crow because if a black person was allegedly accused or perceived to have committed a crime, in some cases every black person, connected or not, suffered the consequences.
Could JE be for the UK what Douglas A. Blackmon called “slavery by another name” when he referred to Jim Crow laws in America in the 19th and early 20th centuries? As mentioned earlier, under Jim Crow, countless black men and boys were lynched in the US. Is JE the equivalent of this in the UK?
Glimmer of Hope
To further substantiate some of the statistics mentioned above, the 2017 Lammy Review showed that of the 3,621 names in the Trident Matrix, the police database of names designed to combat gangs, 86% were black and minority ethnic. Thousands have been prosecuted under JE in the last ten years.
In 2016, however, there seemed to be a glimmer of hope when the Supreme Court ruled that JE had been misinterpreted in the criminal courts for 30 years. The ruling declared that a person who foresees a possible offence does not automatically permit the offence to occur, as the law had been interpreted in previous cases.
Therefore, a person is only guilty of a joint offence if he or she intended to encourage or assist the person who committed the offence to commit it. This sounds reasonable, but I said “a glimmer” because this judgement has not had much impact on the way JE is still applied today. It has resulted in little to no exoneration for the many convictions that have been handed down due to the misinterpretation of the doctrine.
The Cost of JE
Despite the millions of pounds it costs to prosecute JE defendants each year, and its apparent failure to deter or reduce serious violent offending, it still appears to be the favoured method of sentencing and incarcerating young black men and boys.
According to a 2024 Justice Project report on the rising costs of injustice, JE is a costly, harmful, and ineffective policing, prosecution, and punishment strategy that fails to address the problem of violent crime. It costs over £242 million a year to prosecute, and once convicted, the cost of punishment is estimated to be over £1.2 billion a year.
The report shows that the cost of inequality for ethnic minorities in the Criminal Justice System in England and Wales is estimated at £309 million per year. So, with all this in mind, what is the real purpose and true intentions of the use of JE against young black men and boys? Who does it serve?
Considering also that the injustice of JE leads to personal and emotional hardship for those wrongly convicted and for their families and communities. Is this not the modern-day lynching of young black men and boys?
A Little Encouragement
So what is being done to challenge JE and who is doing it? Like the Civil Rights Movement fought against Jim Crow, some organizations and campaign groups today are fighting against the problematic application of JE and supporting those who have been wrongly convicted under it and their families.
One such group is JENGbA – Joint Enterprise Not Guilty by Association, a grassroots group run by volunteers who believe that the application of JE is unjust, unfair and discriminatory against the working class and Black and Minority Ethnic communities. They support families and around 1500 prisoners serving life sentences who have been convicted as secondary parties and campaign for a change in the law on joint enterprise.
In 2023, JENGbA won a case against the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) for not collecting data on JE. As a result, the CPS agreed to monitor the data of those prosecuted under JE, hence the CPS data analysis mentioned earlier.
JENGbA and others like Liberty who contributed to this victory really deserve their flowers as they are the modern-day civil rights activists fighting to change laws that discriminate against blacks and ethnic minority groups.
So a BIG THANK YOU to JENGbA and Liberty, because it’s never easy to challenge the establishment, but you refuse to be silenced!
And with that I’ll leave you with this:
‘It is a big ask to expect an innocent person to serve a 25-year minimum life sentence for another person’s crime and an abomination to expect the decent honest taxpayers of this country to pay for it.’
JENGbA
