How many people were prosecuted under joint enterprise between 2018 and 2024?
Request
I would like the following data: -
- How many people were prosecuted under joint enterprise in London for each year between 2018 and 2024?
- How many people were convicted under joint enterprise in London for each year between 2018 and 2024.
- What were the ages, ethnicities, and genders of those prosecuted and convicted under joint enterprise in London between 2018 and 2024 also.
Response
The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) does not hold information pertaining to all prosecutions involving Joint Enterprise between 2018 and 2024. In order to establish whether a prosecution involves Joint Enterprise a manual review of the circumstances in all cases would be required. As an indication of the work this would involve, our records indicate that during year 2022 CPS London North and London South completed prosecutions in respect of a total of 66,095 defendants.
Section 12(2) of the FOI Act means public authorities are not obliged to comply with a request for information if it estimates the cost of complying would exceed the appropriate limit. The appropriate limit for central government is set at £600. This means that the appropriate limit will be exceeded if it would require more than 24 hours work in determining whether the CPS holds the information, and locating, retrieving, and extracting the information.
We believe that the cost of reviewing the number of CPS files in order to identify whether Joint Enterprise was involved would exceed the appropriate limit.
Under section 16 of the FOIA we have a duty to advise what if any information may assist with the request. As part of the CPS’ Joint Enterprise Pilot 2023, the CPS analysed data pertaining to prosecutions involving Joint Enterprise during a six month period between February to September 2023; Crown Prosecution Service Joint Enterprise Pilot 2023: Data Analysis | The Crown Prosecution Service (cps.gov.uk). It may also assist you to know that the CPS intends to publish annual data on Joint Enterprise from July 2025.