[1] As in all inchoate offences, the defendant "has not himself performed the actus reus but is sufficiently close to doing so, or persuading others to do so, for the law to find it appropriate to punish him".
[3] In each case, the actus reus requirement is that the defendant carry out an act capable of "encouraging or assisting" the commission of another offence.
[4] In contrast to statutory crimes still reliant on incitement, there is no need for the defendant to have communicated his thoughts to anyone else.
Since this is very wide, the courts will have to narrow it by some criterion, probably by reference to the remoteness of the encouragement to the crime.
[9] However, in R v James[10] the selling of "black boxes" solely capable of illegally tapping mains electricity sources was not found to incite a crime.
[9] In R v Marlow[11] providing information on the growing of cannabis was found to constitute an offence.