'Joint Enterprise'* and deportation!

by John Wilkins

AN article in The Guardian caught my eye this week because it dealt with the use of what it termed “controversial and discriminatory joint enterprise law.” It also involved the order to deport the person involved in a crime.

I will outline the case first but then look at how double standards seem to be involved when it is a 'black' person rather than a 'white' or 'brown' person involved.

Osime Brown is 21 years old Jamaican born man who came to the UK aged just 4. He is autistic and was slow as a child even in learning to walk. He had behavioural and learning problems at school and it resulted in exclusion aged 16. It would seem his problems had not been forensically diagnosed until then so he never received adequate support, merely being labelled disruptive.

He had been engaged in low level criminal behaviour but the latest crime involved the theft of a mobile phone. Although he was part of the group who took the phone witnesses said he had asked the other teenagers he was with to stop the street robbery, but he was convicted under the joint enterprise law which anyone considered complicit in a crime can be arrested even if they played no part in the crime. Critics say this law has disproportionately criminalised many young black men with those imprisoned through it being 11 times their presence in the community.

I used the term double standards in the headline for a reason. Our local Campaign Group, BOLD, have been following up the way our local authority have appeared to 'sweep under the carpet' the conviction of only 4 out of nearly 20 men who were present when a local workman suffered three broken ribs, a punctures lung and nearly had his hand severed in an axe attack. They were summoned by one of the gang by phone after the victim interceded in a dispute between the man and a lady driver.

The judge quite clearly termed it gangsterism and when local MP was asked to condemn the case as gangsterism he was happy to publicly acknowledge it as such also. Despite councillors, including the leader, the Local Authority officials being asked not just to condemn the gangsterism and how they can work with the police to reduce it in area no one is prepared to comment. A contrast here is that the police have been very open and forthright about how they are working on this issue.

That is one comparison with how Osime has been treated but let me turn to a more startling disparity, that of deportation. The effect of imprisonment itself on Osime has been considerable. He has suffered racial abuse and bullying. Without, his mother says, a mentor or support worker his health has deteriorated and he is self harming. He does not fully comprehend how he would cope in Jamaica, thinking he could catch a bus to visit mum from there!

I have over time felt that those now termed Immigration Enforcement Officers will use easy targets to boost their figures for deportations. Now I come to another very worrying comparison again from my town Rochdale.

Few people will not have knowledge of the grooming scandal involving vulnerable young girls in Rochdale. Three members of the grooming gang remain in the UK more than 18 months after they lost an appeal against losing their British citizenship. I concur with the Independent's sub headline: 'Home Office accused of prioritising offenders with Jamaican roots over sex abusers.'

Yes Osime has been involved in low level crime, but deportation would be extremely cruel for him with no family support in Jamaica and a condition which will make him even more vulnerable there. It is known that at least 11 have died as a result of unjust deportation from the Windrush scandal, it is likely that Osime could be another unnecessary death. I urge you to sign the Change.org petition for Osime Brown.

* Editor's note on Joint Enterprise:

'Why joint enterprise is unfair and needs changing' by Sandra Paul in The Law Society Gazette 23 December 2014

Exactly two years ago, I stood in tears outside Wood Green Crown Court, having just left my 16-year-old client, one of four teenage black males of previous good character, in the cells facing a three-year custodial sentence for GBH. Some 18 months earlier, he had been part of an altercation at Hendon tube station.

He was guilty of common assault, even ABH, and certainly affray. All of these were offered as guilty pleas to the prosecution. However, they were rejected on the basis that joint enterprise would convict a group of the more serious offence of GBH.

CCTV footage shows my client was as far as 20 feet away from the victim at the time he was stabbed. However, my client was convicted of section 18 GBH on the basis that it was ‘reasonably foreseeable’ that others might get involved when he punched the complainant and that ‘serious harm might’ result, irrespective of whether that was what he intended. My client was 14 at the time of the incident and I am convinced could not have forseen that his action could have led to the ultimate outcome which resulted.

Looking at the CPS guideline published since then, I am hopeful, but not convinced, that a review on the same facts would lead to a different result. Consideration of the judge’s directions for the jury outlined in the Crown Court Bench Book is equally problematic for young people.

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