United Kingdom •
Corporate manslaughter (England and Wales) Australia Several states and territories recognise the crime of
Industrial manslaughter. The
Australian Capital Territory has provisions for industrial manslaughter introduced in 2004. In 2017, industrial manslaughter became an offence in Queensland in their workplace health and safety legislation, the
Work Health and Safety Act 2011. Despite the offence existing in four jurisdictions as of 2020, there have been no successful prosecutions. In
New South Wales on 16 September 2024, the crime of Industrial Manslaughter came into effect following the passage of the Work Health and Safety Amendment (Industrial Manslaughter) Act 2024 earlier that year. Provisions for industrial manslaughter were demanded by the trade union movement after the adolescent building industry worker
Joel Exter fell off a domestic roof and died. Joel's union, the
CFMEU, conducted a significant campaign around his death. The
Labor Party (ALP) government of NSW under
Bob Carr denied that industrial manslaughter provisions were necessary as
Workcover already has provisions for dealing with industrial death. The trade union movement argued that the manslaughter provisions of Workcover were ineffective, as reflected by a lack of prosecution of employers for workplace death. The Victorian Parliament passed the Workplace Safety Legislation Amendment (Workplace Manslaughter and other matters) Bill 2019 on 26 November 2019 and is expected to come into effect on a day to be proclaimed or, at the latest, 1 July 2020.
Canada In
Canada, Bill C-45 was enacted as a response to the
Westray Mine explosion that killed twenty-six miners in 1992. The Bill added a new section to
the Canadian Criminal Code ("217.1 Every one who undertakes, or has the authority, to direct how another person does work or performs a task is under a legal duty to take reasonable steps to prevent bodily harm to that person, or any other person, arising from that work or task.") and adds sections 22.1 and 22.2 to the
Criminal Code to impose criminal liability on organizations for negligence (s. 22.1) and other offences (s. 22.2).
New Zealand In 2012, proposals were put forward in the
New Zealand Parliament for a corporate manslaughter statute, in the wake of the CTV building collapse during the
2011 Canterbury earthquake, and the
Pike River Mine disaster. As of March 2015,
Labour Party leader
Andrew Little had a
private member's bill in the ballot that would, if passed, add a charge of corporate manslaughter to the
Crimes Act 1961.
United States In the U.S., there is currently no corporate manslaughter law. However, there have been numerous calls in the literature for a "
corporate death penalty". A 2019 study argued that industries that kill more people each year than they employ should have an industry-wide corporate death penalty. == See also ==