Joint Enterprise, Hostility and the Construction of Dangerous Belonging

Abstract

This chapter investigates the pervasiveness of risk-based logics in criminalization by exploring the role of the construction of dangerous identities and belonging within the law of joint enterprise (JE) in England and Wales. The chapter argues that recent transformations in this area of law express and expose an ambivalence within the criminal law, which leaves it intrinsically vulnerable to the demands of insecurity and uncertainty that drive concerns with risk. It does so first by examining the context, law and practical consequences of joint enterprise, which, in the chapter, is characterized as an example of hostile criminalization, a form of criminalization that is geared at channeling hostility toward individuals and groups that are identified as dangerous others. It then discusses how the 2016 decision by the UK Supreme Court in R v Jogee, which formally abolished the main doctrine grounding joint enterprise, left this area of criminalization substantially undisturbed. The chapter concludes by suggesting that forms of hostile criminalization, and the overwhelming concern with risk displayed by them, cannot be easily dispelled through formal efforts at legal reform, since they serve a (deeply problematic) social function.