ABSTRACT

Soon after the establishment of the first Factories Inspectorate in 1833 in the United Kingdom, there emerged an enforcement culture which eschewed prosecution as the major enforcement strategy, and instead focused on securing compliance through advice, persuasion and negotiation (Bartrip and Fenn, 1980, especially 205-206; Bartrip and Burman, 1983: 60). W.G. Carson’s contribution to this debate was to explore the historical circumstances and dynamics of this phenomenon, to explain its historical contingency and to observe its ideological longevity (Carson, 1979, 1980b; Johnstone, 2000). Carson (1980b) argued that factory crime was ‘ambiguous’ – there was (and is) a discontinuity between Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) crime and ‘real’ crime. The community views OHS contraventions as not being ‘really criminal’. While factory offences have been statutorily described as crimes and proscribed by law, contraventions have been frequent but substantially tolerated in practice and rarely prosecuted. This Carson (1979) called the ‘conventionalisation’ of OHS crime.