ABSTRACT
First and foremost, enforcement should never simply be taken to mean prosecution. The Health and Safety Commission, in its policy statement on enforcement (HSC150) says that the term ‘enforcement’ has a wide meaning and applies to all dealings between enforcing authorities and those on whom the law places duties. It was Hawkins [1] who recognized that law may be enforced by compulsion and coercion, or by conciliation and compromise, and, in the words of Hutter [2] the term ‘enforcement’ should be used to accommodate a ‘much wider concept, defining enforcement as the whole process of compelling observance with some broadly perceived objectives of the law’. It is this definition that is accepted for the purposes of this chapter and it is this process of compulsion, and the mechanisms to be employed to achieve this end that will be explored.
