Contradiction, critique and criminal law

Norrie, Alan

doi:10.1017/cbo9781139031851.006

Cited by 8 publications

(15 citation statements)

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“…This legal privilege, popular for safety crimes but unknown in negligent driving cases, reinforces the legal fiction of limited liability that maintains that the corporation, not the individuals hiding behind the legal fiction, made the negligent decision that killed the worker. And while there is some value in finding a company criminally responsible for killing workers and/or members of the public—corporate reputation does matter (Braithwaite 2005)—this practice overlooks the fact that corporations change names and ownership and declare bankruptcy when it is to their advantage (Norrie 2001).…”

Section: The Enforcement Recordmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In this kind of “bifurcated model of criminal process” (Tombs and Whyte 2007, 110), attempts to assimilate corporate wrongdoing into the criminal law have developed alongside a separate, non-criminal means of dealing with health and safety offences. This means there is little incentive for Crown prosecutors, both ideologically in terms of the prevailing belief that safety crimes are not “real” crimes, and legally because of the lower legal standard of proof associated with strict liability offences (Norrie 2001), to launch complex criminal cases. However, as W.G.…”

Section: The Enforcement Recordmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Many Crown and defence lawyers therefore believe that it would be unfair (even unconstitutional) for OHS inspectors to interview witnesses and suspects and collect evidence for a regulatory investigation only to decide mid-stride that the case should be handed off to the police as a criminal matter. This distinction reflects the historical differentiation of corporate crime from individual crimes that justifies responding to corporate offences primarily through non-criminal rules and regulations (the dominant trend historically), versus the assimilation of corporate deviance into criminal law by adjusting existing laws in an attempt to account for the serious crimes committed by corporations (Norrie 2001; Tombs and Whyte 2007). Never the two worlds should meet, states this orthodox legal script, and we should therefore go to great lengths to ensure that criminal proceedings are not “contaminated” by the lower standard of proof associated with provincial OHS laws.…”

Section: The Enforcement Recordmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The Westray bill’s enforcement is further impeded by the legal orthodoxy of criminal negligence standards, which would have us believe that negligence is uniformly applied under the law when it is in fact socially (over)determined (Norrie 2001). Two key elements limit the application of criminal negligence: first, the bill actually widens criminal responsibility by requiring the Crown to prove only that “a senior officer” (an individual with an important role in setting policy or managing an important unit within the organization) should have taken “reasonable” steps to prevent the offence (Department of Justice Canada 2003).…”

Section: The Enforcement Recordmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Law, Regulation, and Safety Crime: Exploring the Boundaries of Criminalizing Powerful Corporate Actors

Bittle¹,

Snider²

2015

Can. j. law soc.

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Th is article interrogates the laws that govern safety crimes, harmful but typically unintentional acts of negligence that occur in the production of goods and services. Acts that injure employees at work are commonly depicted in legal discourses as accidents and penalized through administrative laws, although other negligent acts such as driving offences causing injury or death are treated as potentially criminal events. Through a discourse analysis of legal and regulatory texts and documents, the authors argue that the constitution of workplace safety crime is rooted in complex historical factors that shape state responses to corporate wrongdoing. Th is article documents the roots of this "common sense" view of workplace crime, empirically focusing on Canadian corporate negligence law, and concludes with tentative strategies of resistance and change. RésuméCet article remet en question les lois concernant les crimes de sécurité, qui sont le plus souvent le résultat d'une négligence délétère mais involontaire dans le processus de production de biens et de services. Les actions qui se soldent par des blessures de travailleurs sont souvent décrites juridiquement comme des accidents et pénalisées par voie administrative, alors que d'autres actions négligentes, comme les infractions au volant causant des blessures ou la mort, sont traitées comme des actes potentiellement criminels. Grâce à une analyse des textes et documents législatifs et réglementaires, les auteurs affi rment que la constitution des crimes de sécurité au travail se fonde sur une série de facteurs historiques complexes qui conditionnent la réaction des gouvernements aux fautes commises par les sociétés. L'article documente les origines de cette vision « du bon sens » de la criminalité en milieu de travail en se concentrant de façon empirique sur le droit de la négligence des entreprises au Canada, et conclut sur des pistes de stratégies de résistance et de changement. *The authors are indebted to Frank Pearce and Steve Tombs, whose earlier work comparing corporate crime with motoring offences inspired this article, and to Harry Glasbeek and Jennifer Quaid for their insightful critiques. Th ank you also to Chloe Alexander and Alexander Marar for their research assistance.

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Section: The Enforcement Recordmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: The Enforcement Recordmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: The Enforcement Recordmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: The Enforcement Recordmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Law, Regulation, and Safety Crime: Exploring the Boundaries of Criminalizing Powerful Corporate Actors

Bittle¹,

Snider²

2015

Can. j. law soc.

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“…In fact, the principal objective of criminal law is social control achieved by legal means (legal social control). 204 In this regard, law reinforces the social order in aiming to protect the society from harm to its peaceful, regular and orderly lifestyle. Maintaining social order constitutes efficient preservation of the majority culture.…”

Section: Inclusion Of In Personam General Defensesmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Matrix of Insanity in Modern Criminal Law

Hallevy¹

2015

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Of Semiotics, the Marginalised and Laws During the Lockdown in India

Tiwari

Parmar

2022

Int J Semiot Law

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On 24th March 2020, the first nationwide complete lockdown was announced by the Prime Minister of India for 21 days which was later extended to 31st May 2020. Consequently, thousands of migrant workers placed in big cities had no other option but to go back to their native villages. Their journeys back to villages- thousands of kilometres on bicycles or foot due to the non-availability of public transport amidst the travel ban- were driven by the compulsions of food and shelter. In one of many heart-wrenching incidents, sixteen laborers were run over by a freight train (all passenger trains in the wake of lockdown had been halted) while they were resting on the railway tracks. The images of the Roti (Indian bread) on the railway track strewn across were beamed on the national news channels, as a telling commentary of the unimaginable hardships of these workers. Ironically, in the eyes of law, they were trespassers under the Indian Railways Act, 1989. The Indian Railway did not pay any compensation to the victims. Their act also violated the Indian Disaster Management Act, 2005 and Indian Penal Code, 1860- the law for the breach of lockdown guidelines and the law for disobedience of order by public servants respectively- for having decided to travel amidst a travel ban. The semiotics of law-making acts ‘criminal’ bereft of ‘moral culpability’ are seldom questioned on their supposed amoral foundations. Pandemic exhibited that social fissures not only condition the individual or community actions but also the actions of the State. Minorities especially Muslims were at the receiving end of State’s selective enforcement of lockdown laws in India. The various instances in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic expose the hollow claims of equality before the law and the equal protection of laws as a constitutional promise to every citizen. This article aims to unravel the ostensible and the actual moral exhibition of such Indian laws through the lens of several incidents during the nationwide lockdown in India. This paper would argue that this constructed positivist amorality needs to be deconstructed to unearth the power imbalance that it seeks to hide.

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Contradiction, critique and criminal law

Cited by 8 publications

References 0 publications

Law, Regulation, and Safety Crime: Exploring the Boundaries of Criminalizing Powerful Corporate Actors

Law, Regulation, and Safety Crime: Exploring the Boundaries of Criminalizing Powerful Corporate Actors

The Matrix of Insanity in Modern Criminal Law

Of Semiotics, the Marginalised and Laws During the Lockdown in India

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