Criminalising Institutional Failures to Prevent, Identify or React to Child Sexual Abuse
Date
2017
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Publisher
University of Technology Sydney, Australia
Abstract
Although there is increasing academic recognition of corporations as criminogenic, the
criminal legal system has demonstrated difficulties in conceptualising corporate culpability.
The current Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse provides
ample evidence of why organisations can and should be criminalised for systemic failures.
I demonstrate that the emphasis upon individualistic subjective culpability by the criminal
legal system does not adequately encapsulate the institutional failings detailed before the
Royal Commission. Whilst mandatory reporting offences are important, these offences do
not adequately respond to the kinds of organisational failings identified by the Royal
Commission. I argue in favour of developing a new institutional offence constructed upon
realist concepts of negligence and/or corporate culture that recognises that organisations
are capable of wrongdoing and sufficiently blameworthy to justify the imposition of
criminal sanctions. I conclude by arguing that the expressive role of criminal law justifies
and requires the criminalisation of this kind of organisational wrongdoing.
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Keywords
Systemic failure, corporate culture, negligence, institutional abuse, Australia, International Resources
Citation
Crofts, P. (2017). Criminalising Institutional Failures to Prevent, Identify or React to Child Sexual Abuse. University of Technology Sydney, Australia