Are Directors Getting Away with Manslaughter? Emerging Trends in Prosecutions for Corporate Manslaughter

Abstract

This paper examines each of the six concluded cases brought under the Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act 2007 to date and queries: why so few cases have been brought to trial, despite workplace deaths remaining in excess of 145 per year; why all six companies have been small companies, and all received fines below the £ 500,000 threshold recommended by the Sentencing Guidelines Council; and, finally, why individual charges of manslaughter against directors were either not brought or abandoned.