How criminal liability reaches beyond the person who commits the offence to those who aid, encourage or procure it.
A secondary party can be convicted of the same offence, and face the same maximum sentence, as the person whose hands carried it out. This chapter starts with the distinction between principals and secondary parties, the derivative nature of accessorial liability, and the innocent agent doctrine that treats the manipulator as the true principal. It then works through the four forms of secondary participation, when presence, supplying articles or timing will suffice, and the two-part mens rea the prosecution must prove — including the joint enterprise rules that govern liability for murder. It finishes with what an effective withdrawal demands, and the inchoate offences under the Serious Crime Act 2007 that catch encouragement or assistance even where no offence is ever committed.
