Reflection on reforms: developing criminal accountability for industrial deaths

Abstract

Providing Context: The criminal law has numerous aims, often cited in introductory textbooks to include promoting justice, providing norms to reduce unacceptable social behaviour, achieving deterrence or preventing crime, promoting rehabilitation for the law breaker, providing retribution against the law breaker, expressing moral concern at social harms (denunciation) and enabling appropriate levels of accountability. The criminal justice system is seen as a system providing meaning, achieving goals, and having a purpose rooted within the very foundations of all social and legal systems and ways of life. This paper deals with the application of the criminal law to death as a result of industrial activity (industrial deaths are taken here to refer to traumatic and sudden workplace deaths and deaths in public disasters). It discusses organisational accountability for industrial deaths through examining reform processes in three countries: Australia, Canada and England and Wales. Show more