ABSTRACT
This chapter is concerned with how the perpetrators of safety crimes are dealt with after they have been found guilty in a criminal court. Before starting our discussion of how court sanctions and punishment are applied in the context of safety crimes, we begin with a couple of important background issues that need to be borne in mind when reading this chapter. First, it is likely that in most jurisdictions, safety crimes do not attract the most punitive response from the state when compared with other forms of white-collar and corporate crime. Bernie Ebbers, the World Com Chief, was sentenced to 25 years in jail in July 2005 for his part in the corruption that brought down his business empire; and, in October 2006, Jeffrey Skilling, the Enron Chief Executive, was sentenced to 24 years in jail for his part in those frauds. No employer to our knowledge has ever faced such a lengthy sentence for killing — let alone injuring — in the workplace. This can be partly explained as a function of the differentiated way in which states respond to different forms of crime. Large scale crimes of corruption subvert and threaten the smooth operation of legitimate markets in the way that safety crimes generally don't. Therefore it is the former types of crime that may produce more punitive state responses than other forms of white collar and corporate crime (Slapper and Tombs 1999), although as we indicated in the previous chapter, safety crimes and the popular opposition that they often generate can present a crisis of stability for the social order. It is at those moments that law reformers, legislatures and courts are more receptive to arguments for more punitive responses.
