In 2017 in Grenfell Tower, London a fire originated from a malfunctioning fridge-freezer rapidly expanded due to the building’s cladding, killing 72 people. A year later during a torrential rainstorm, a 210-metre section of Morandi Bridge in Italy collapsed. Although the investigation is still underway, evidence demonstrated that the event was caused by corrosion and damage of the stay. 43 people died. In both jurisdictions legislation is in place to hold the corporations managing the infrastructures accountable for their negligent conduct and the deaths it caused.
LAW IN UK – Corporate Manslaughter:
Corporate Manslaughter is an offence created by Section 1 of the Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act 2007 (‘the Act’). It came into force on 6th April 2008. The Act, which replaces the previous offence of gross negligence manslaughter in relation to companies and other organisations, is wider in scope than the previous common law offence. The ratio behind this law is to ensure that companies and other organisations can be held properly accountable for very serious failings at senior management level resulting in death. To be successful, the prosecution should demonstrate that the accused breached a duty of care that it had to the deceased causing death. The new offence only applies to certain organisations as private bodies such as limited companies and partnerships. Public bodies such as local authorities and NHS Trusts can also be held liable, on the grounds that they are bodies incorporated by statute as well as Specified government departments and police forces. Although the threshold for liability is higher than before, requiring proof of a gross breach of the relevant duty of care, it is no longer necessary to show that a person who was the ‘controlling mind’ of the organisation was personally responsible for the offence.
LAW IN ITALY – Legislative Decree 231/01
The Legislative Decree no. 231 of 2001 states that legal entities, including limited companies, may be held liable – and therefore sanctioned by financial means or criminal proceedings – in relation to certain crimes which are committed or attempted in Italy or abroad in the interest or for benefit of the Company. The law thus introduced for the first time into the Italian legal system the direct liability of companies and other legal entities for crimes committed by directors, executives, their subordinates and other subjects acting on behalf of the legal entity, when the unlawful conduct has been carried out in the interest of or to the benefit of the company concerned. The penalties applicable to the company may include fines, interdictions, confiscation, publication of the sentence and appointment of a special administrator. Interdiction measures, which may have a more severe impact on the company than monetary penalties, consist in the suspension or revocation of licenses and concessions, prohibition on contracting with the public administration, prohibition on conducting business activities, denial or revocation of funding and contributions, and the prohibition on advertising products and services.A defence for the company lies in what is known as 231 System in Art 6. Providing that an Entity shall not be liable where it can prove that it adopted and effectively implemented, before the offence was committed, “an appropriate organisation and management model to prevent offences of the kind that has occurred” What the Grenfell Tower fire and the Morandi Bridge collapse have in common is that there has been a gross breach of the duty of care by the companies in charge of the management of the infrastructures resulting in death. In both jurisdictions legislation exists that – at least in theory – makes corporations accountable for their wrongdoings, however their practical effectiveness has been challenged by corporate criminologists. In the UK – since the introduction of the Act – only 26 companies have been successfully prosecuted for corporate manslaughter. Furthermore a recurrent criticism is that payment of a fine, however large, is not an appropriate or a proportionate penalty for the crime of killing a person by flouting health and safety law which is in fact criminal law. Larger corporations will pay the fine and carry on killing and maiming as usual. The ineffectiveness of this type of legislation, however, is not only limited to the United Kingdom or Italy, instead on a global level the law is manipulated to favour ‘powerful interests, and the unprecedented power of multinational corporations’ thus leaving ‘ordinary people exposed to the harms that result from corporate greed taking precedence over the rule of law’.
Corporate Criminology:
From a criminological point of view the two cases are classified as corporate crimes. Corporate crime is a broad term, covering a large range of offences of omission and commission with differing types of modus operandi, perpetrators, effects, and victims. Because ‘corporate crime’ refers to a wide range of events and processes, it is often classified into ‘types’, one common classification covering financial offences, crimes against employees, the natural environment, and consumers. For the purpose of this article, state-corporate crimes are also worth to be considered. This term first appeared in 1990, when Michalowski and Kramer defined this offence as signifying ‘illegal or socially injurious actions that occur when one or more institutions of political governance pursue a goal in direct co‐operation with one or more institutions of economic production and distribution’ . The importance of this phenomenon is twofold. On the one hand, the concept reveals that deviant organisational outcomes are not discrete acts, but rather the outcome of relationships between different social institutions. On the other, by focusing upon the relational character of the State, the concept of State‐corporate crime foregrounds the ways in which horizontal relationships between economic and political institutions contain powerful potential for the production of socially injurious actions. Scholars agree that in this type of crime, the state plays a large part in initiating or facilitating it. For instance, the corporations either engage in illegality at the prompt of, or with the approval of, State institutions, and/or State actors fail to prevent, respond to, or collude with such illegality. The Morandi Bridge collapse can be considered an example of state-corporate crime. The bridge- along with the Italian motorway network – is run by a company which now faces charges under the Legislative Decree 231/01. However, the State has also a significant involvement in the management of roads and bridges. Evidence suggests that the risk of a collapse of the bridge was known to the Ministry of Transportations and Infrastructures since 2015 but it failed to take the relevant measures to prevent the catastrophe. Furthermore, in 2013 the Ministry created a committee to oversee the control and management of roads and bridges making it completely responsible for the omissions occurred in the Morandi Bridge case.
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