Corporations and Criminal Responsibility

Call No. 345.4202 WEL 2001

Edition:2nd ed.

Physical Description: xvii, 198 p. ; 24 cm.

notes: includes bibliographies and index.

Contemporary concern about technological hazards posed by business enterprises has intensified interest in the criminality of corporations. Incorporating ideas from a wide range of literature, the book argues that there is no magic answer to corporate power, to issues of personal safety andtheir inter-relationship with criminal law and justice. The attention paid to corporate criminal liability by courts, legislatures, law reform bodies and international organizations has increased markedly in the past decade.As in the first edition, the book takes what might be called a panoptic approach to the subject. Corporations and their susceptibility to criminal law are examined from sociological, psychological, philosophical and organizational perspectives as the book progresses. This edition has been revisedand updated to take account of the burgeoning scholarly literature. Detailed analysis of judicial and legislative movements in England and Wales, in other national jurisdictions and at the level of international organizations follows. Two new chapters, on corporate manslaughter and on comparativeand international responses to corporate crime, accommodate these changes. The book is distinctive in combining legal analysis and discussion of law reform debates with a theoretical account of the relationship between legal institutions and the role of risk and blame in shaping criminal law and thepractices of the criminal justice system.