ABSTRACT

This chapter focuses on two areas of criminal liability, that is, breaches of statutory duties in health and safety and reckless manslaughter. Various perceptions of statutory breaches as criminal, technical or quasi-criminal and possible reasons for such perceptions are reviewed. In contrast to negligence, no actual harm is required to bring a criminal charge, although Bergman and Disaster Action UK, in their response to the LCCP Consultation Paper on Involuntary Manslaughter, recommended a range of new statutory offences with degrees of harmful outcomes. The statutory regulation of soccer grounds in the 1980s relied on local relationships between the licence giver and holder, with little national standardisation of variable local authority practices and monitoring. The tradition has been to make a corporation vicariously liable for the acts of its servants in statutory duties, based on strict liability up until 1944.