Joint Enterprise

CPS guidance explains that before R v Jogee; Ruddock v The Queen [2016] UKSC 8; UKPC 7, the law on secondary liability following the decision in R v Jogee had operated under the doctrine of 'parasitic accessory liability' (PAL): if two people set out to commit one crime and, in the course of it, one of them committed a further crime, the other was guilty as an accessory to that further crime merely if he had foreseen the possibility that his companion might act as he did. The Supreme Court held this had been a wrong turn, because it equated foresight of what the principal might do with an intention to assist him doing it. Following R v Jogee, PAL no longer applies as a basis for criminal liability — foresight is now treated only as evidence from which intention to assist or encourage may be inferred, not as a substitute for it.

In its place, CPS guidance sets out the ordinary principles of secondary liability that now govern all cases involving multiple parties: D2 must intend to encourage or assist the commission of the crime, with knowledge of any existing facts necessary to give D1's conduct its criminal character, and if D1's offence requires a particular intent, D2 must intend to assist or encourage D1 to act with that intent. Liability under this framework has old statutory roots — a secondary party can be prosecuted and punished as if he were a principal offender under section 8 of the Accessories and Abettors Act 1861 — but the modern test for what must be proved against the accessory is the Jogee intention-based test rather than the older foresight-based one.