For example, where one member of a group (the principal party) uses a knife to kill or injure someone, other members of the group (the secondary parties) can, under the doctrine of joint enterprise, also be convicted of having caused the death or injury to that person. Joint enterprise is commonly used in situations where a group of people are involved or present when an offence is committed in order to hold all members of the group criminally liable for a crime committed by only one or some members of the group. Those familiar with the history of the controversial legal doctrine of ‘joint enterprise’ – a form of guilt by association – will recognise the terminology in which this latter provision is cast. Joint enterprise, ‘foresight’ and secondary parties However, it also allows for an SVRO to be made in respect on any person aged 18 or over who is convicted of an offence, not necessarily one involving his or her own use or possession of a bladed article or other offensive weapon, but who is found on a balance of probabilities to have known or ought to have known that another person would use or be in possession of such a weapon in the commission of an offence. As may be expected, the Bill provides that a court may impose an SVRO on any person aged 18 or over who it has convicted of an offence involving the use of a bladed article or other offensive weapon or who had such a weapon with them when the offence was committed. This change, which is now contained within the proposed legislation, significantly expands both the number of people who could be subject to SVROs and, given the legal definition of an ‘offensive weapon’ as ‘any tool made, adapted or intended for the purpose of inflicting mental or physical injury upon another person’, the circumstance in which they could be imposed.īut the proposed legislation goes even further in seeking to widen the potential use of SVROs.

However once re-elected, home secretary Priti Patel issued a consultation document proposing that SVROs could be applied to any person aged 18 and over who is convicted of an offence involving a knife or other offensive weapon.

From this, it might be supposed that use of SVROs would be restricted to those ‘convicted of knife crime’. Plans for such orders were originally put forward in the Conservative Party manifesto for the 2019 General Election, which promised that ‘police will be empowered by a new court order to target known knife carriers, making it easier for officers to stop and search those convicted of knife crime’. To give effect to this, those subject to SVROs will be legally required to notify the police in any areas they move to or choose to reside for more than a month, and failure to do so will itself constitute a criminal offence punishable by up to two years’ imprisonment. They can also be executed in any police area in the country. By contrast, SVROs will last for a minimum of six months and up to a maximum of two years, and they can be renewed and extended further on the application of the police. While such ‘suspicionless’ stops and searches can be authorised for use by the police under what is known as Section 60, such authorisations are limited as to both the time period and specific location where they can be used. Those who are made subject to such orders will be marked out to be stopped and searched at any time and in any public place, ie, without the normal requirement for the police officer to have ‘reasonable grounds’ for suspecting that the person stopped is in possession of a knife or other offensive weapon at the time. The Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill reintroduced to Parliament contains provisions for a significant extension in the use of police stop and search powers under new Serious Violence Reduction Orders (SVROs). As opposition to the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill grows, Lee Bridges examines provisions to expand stop and search through the introduction of Serious Violence Reduction Orders.

Criminal probability race