Aspects of Criminal Law Breached - Assignment Example

Safety Неаlth & Еnvirоnmеnt Student’s Name Subject Professor University/Institution Location Date Aspects of Criminal Law Breached Criminal law, as a body of law relates to crime. It regulates the social conduct by prescribing threatening, harming or endangering health, moral and safety welfare of people. Its primary mechanism of dealing with an offense includes the punishment to those who violates the laws (Moore 2010). In the case study ‘Bread Factory Horror’, it was a reckless undertaking involving involuntary manslaughter, a category of fatal offence. An aspect of criminal law breached in this case include a guilty act accomplished by an omission to act, which is a legal, healthy and technical duty to act. On the behalf of Fresha Bakery, the Chief Engineer, Managing and Production Directors did not act toward the permit to work system and omitted the technical fact of thermal risks involved in the repair. The crime was a strict liability offence with modern regulatory offenses of Health and safety at Work Act. Under the Industrial Health Act 1988, it is strict liability offence for a manager to enforce a worker to work in hazardous facility or equipment (Chmiel 2008). This is tantamount to absolute liability, which recklessness makes it a strict liability crime. The engineer knew that there was little intervention once the process began, since the conveyer belt could not reverse. The responsibility of supervision is sorely invested on managers, who with additional information are expected to advice the workers accordingly. However, there is no specified intention of the two workers to proceed, until they were required to do so. As per the industrial duties and responsibilities toward Occupational Health and Safety Act, the employers consciously failed to provide the necessary equipment, protective devices, and information and worker protection to Mr. Ericks and Mayes. Both workers had taken reasonable responsibility for their safety and personal health. A heinous assumption was used to settle on the fact that the facility was not hazardous and risky, despite the manufacturer’s terms of 12 hours of cooling. The Chief Engineer confirmed that there was no safety standard designed for employee’s protection against death and serious physical harm which is a primary ‘horizontal’ OSHA concern for all industries. The Safety, Health and Welfare at Work Act 2005 require an employer to obtain the services from competent person where necessary. They also need to prepare and revise emergency plans for evacuation and clarifies that all reasonable practices should ensure that individual at work place is not exposed to safety and health risks (Danner & Martinez 2005). The options for the relatives to pursue civil action As argued in Hutter, (2006), there was generally lack of internal and external prescribed and agreed upon regulations and legislations for Harvest Time Bakery. Due to many industrial risks and hazards there are several safety organisations and standards, established in different nations. There was no set up ‘permit to work system’ as Mr. Masters indicated that he would sort it now. Little OSHA knowledge of Process Safety Management were not applied or developed in the Bakery. There was no any comprehensive understanding developed in regard to the demand of safety especially in an industrial sector. Since the occurrence of disasters in many instances appears without warning, their control procedures were lacking in effectiveness. Safety precautions as directed by oven manufacturers were necessary as an appropriate safety precaution. Nevertheless, the controls did not perform as expected, and the outcomes were extremely serious. According to Olsen & Lindoe (2009), lack of a complete system safety process led to unidentified consequences. The company does not show any step toward identifying hazards, assessing risks to minimize, eliminate or control fire hazard and a way to mitigate possible residual risks. The risk analysis and prioritizing primarily threatened the life of the men. Engineering analyses and Management oversight would have contributed to a systematic and comprehensive approach to risk control. The elements toward the death were purely human factors, insufficient enhanced safety knowledge and assumption on precautions and standards. Poor mitigation and emergency responses were against the process risk management. There was also no reliable engineering to test the equipment integrity and system inspections. As it can be seen from the case study and its outcomes, the role of company’s safety engineer in risk reduction at the company was given insufficient importance. Furthermore, safety engineering aims at achieving this, through managerial processes in order to spot and minimize hazards. The risk was variously contributed by human, organizational and technological factors managing safety and health. There had to be a considerable risk with the two men sent into that oven, just 2 hours after it was baking at 260 degrees. This makes the three Fresha staff; Managing Director John Bridson, Production Director Brian Jones and Chief Engineer Denis Masters who were involved liable to the death. What must be proved for the action to succeed? As Davies, Croall & Tyrer (2005) argues, generally, criminal laws prohibit undesirable acts and thus the proof of a crime would require a proof of some act. The guilty act involved in this case, which is also based on modern regulatory offenses, makes it a strict liability offense. This is because; repairs were directed when the oven heat was above the prescribed limit. There is sure physical element in committing crime. This followed an omission to inform and wait for the prescribed hours. There was also lack of effective safety equipment to carry on the repairs inside a hot oven. The duty of are arises through the Chief Engineer and Directors official positions. They consented and assumed the existing dangerous situation. This was a glossy negligent and thus crime took place. Since Mr. Mayes and Ericks could not withhold to orders and consent, it is possible to conclude that the act was not in the victims’ best interest. This would have been stopped when there was prospects of fatal accident. It was not lawful to withhold protective gadgets and precautions without which the victim died. As prosecution told the Leicester Crown Court, the company had been informed by oven manufacturers that, that job would have taken 12 hours with 4 people. This was however not followed. The presence of causation validates the guilty act since Harvest Time Bakery as argued in the case, put production before safety. The company loss was at 1,120 pounds each hour the oven was not working and they found it much to lose. The directors’ and Engineer’s action has, but for the sake of production. The harm was predictable, having the oven so hot and incapability of the conveyer belt to be reversed. This meant that the repair had to be done with complete awareness of inevitable harm to the two workers. There is also a lower threshold of guilty mind, since the defendants generally recognized the repair decision was dangerous but decided to go by it anyway. The court would consider that the actors recognized the danger, or they were alternatively supposed to have recognized the risk. This means they erased intent which was a requirement (Roberts 2009). How may the respondent try to defend it? The defendant may take a step to proof that there was no intent, of which there was not to reach a risky decision. This is based on elimination of guilty mind. The crime, to most judges would require both guilty act and guilty mind as requirements to have the severe consequences of criminal law. Both elements were not present at the same moment and they did not occur sequentially. Lack of taking the necessary precautions was an omission to act which was not criminal. Some precautions taken allowed the men only to go through the entrance hatch so for the company to avoid the cost of removing the side panels. They had confirmed that the outer sides of oven were at 40 degrees and provided the men with suit, hat, gloves, elbow and knee pads without which the worker men would die. Lack of measures to discontinuate the conveyer belts was not a voluntary act, thus the act is not grossly negligent. To ensure that the repair was in the victim best interest, portable radios that relayed terrifying messages had been provided. It was reasonable for the defendant to conclude that the repair was in the workers’ best interest, and should be stopped once there were harmful prospects (Laufer 2008). The intervening act can break the causation to unpredictable event. It can term it a mistake in carrying out an action. The defendant motives eliminate any possibility of killing. It was mere emphasis on company loss which was a normal undertaking to avert the loss. The act has no wrongfulness of intent and thus sufficiently shows that the defendants acted negligently. Though the action is prohibited by Health and Safety Act, it is categorized among the Mala prohibita laws where no wrongfulness is associated with it. The concept of strict prohibition does not sorely make it crime at all. This is as opposed to an intentionally or recklessly act. Since the element of intent is unclear, crime was not generally intentional. It is thus not a strict liability crime, but a breach of administrative and technical regulations (Vu 2004). It was reported that the men had various personal commitments which may have resulted to speed and obscured their judgment. References Chmiel, N. (Ed.) 2008, ‘An Introduction to Work and Organizational Psychology: An European Perspective’, Wiley-Blackwell. Danner, A. M., & Martinez, J. S 2005, ‘Guilty Associations: Joint Criminal Enterprise, Command Responsibility, and the Development of International Criminal Law’, California Law Review, 75-169. Davies, M., Croall, H., & Tyrer, J 2005, ‘Criminal justice: an introduction to the criminal justice system in England and Wales’, Pearson Education. Hutter, B. M 2006, ‘Risk, regulation, and management’, Risk in social science, 202. Laufer, W. S 2008, ‘Corporate bodies and guilty minds: The failure of corporate criminal liability’, University of Chicago Press. Moore, M. S 2010, ‘Placing blame: A general theory of the criminal law’, Oxford University Press. Olsen, O. E., & Lindoe, P. H 2009, ‘Risk on the ramble: The international transfer of risk and vulnerability’, Safety Science, 47(6), 743-755. Roberts, J 2009, ‘Ignorance is Effectively Bliss: Collateral Consequences of Criminal Convictions, Silence and Misinformation in the Guilty Plea Process’, Iowa Law Review, 95(119). Vu, S. N 2004, ‘Corporate Criminal Liability: Patchwork Verdicts and the Problem of Locating a Guilty Agent’, Colum. L. Rev., 104, 459. Read More