The Limits of Corporate Manslaughter Reforms

Abstract

This book has attempted to establish that the movement towards the criminalisation of work-related death cases, via the liberalisation of criminal law attribution rules and the introduction of corporate manslaughter offences, is reflective of a communicative deficit within systems of health and safety regulation. These systems tend to be instrumental in nature and technical in form, both factors that contribute to a distancing of the law from its legitimating foundations in deliberative public discourse. Criminal law, it is argued, has the potential to provide a more compelling public account of the ‘reasons for’ regulating, highlighting its connection to deeper social values. It can do this because it is an explicitly normative system of law that involves the censure of ‘wrongdoing in which the public is properly interested’ (Duff 2001: 61), and it involves making judgements about the accountability of the defendant for that wrong. It should make a statement about why compliance with the law is ‘right’ and so persuade the defendant and others of that rightness (Duff 2001: 80; Dzur and Mirchandani 2007: 156). In this way, the legitimacy of the regulatory system and the values it pursues are enhanced. Criminalisation is thus part of a constructive movement towards a more democratically constituted regulatory system.