Abstract

Interviews were undertaken with participants drawn from four groups: police detectives; criminal lawyers; young people in the community (aged 25 and under); and prisoners, convicted when young (aged 25 years old and under) of serious violence using the principles of joint enterprise. The questions focused on: individual’s life histories (for practitioners this focused on their professional histories); young people's social relations; experiences of violence; for the practitioners, the process of investigating cases of serious ‘group-related’ violence involving young people; understandings and perceptions of joint enterprise and the law related to serious violence; and – for practitioners – perceptions of young people’s understandings of the law.