ABSTRACT
Introduction There are offences of conspiracy in statutory form (s 105 of the Criminal Law Act 1977) and at common law. The statutory offence amounts to making an agreement between two or more persons necessarily entailing the commission of a crime provided it is carried out in accordance with their intentions. This means that two or more defendants must agree to or plan to commit a crime. This is an inchoate offence, since a charge of conspiracy may arise even where the substantive crime never happened. Making the agreement with the intention to carry it out is sufficient. A belief that the substantive offence is impossible, as well as the objective fact that the substantive offence is impossible, afford the defendants no defence (Anderson (1986)).
