Prosecution has always been a controversial element in the enforcement armoury of OHS regulators. At the same time, it has long been argued that the low level of court-imposed fines has had a chilling effect on both the OHS inspectorate's enforcement approaches and the impact of OHS legislation.
Using three examples of OHS prosecutions carried out in the Victorian Magistrates' Courts, Professor Johnstone shows how courts, inspectors, prosecutors, and defence counsel are involved in filtering or reshaping OHS issues during the prosecution process, both pre-trial and in court. He argues that OHS offences are constructed by focusing on "events"--in most cases incidents resulting in injury or death. This "event-focus" ensures that the attention of the parties is drawn to the details of the incident and away from the broader context of the event. During the court-based sentencing process, defence counsel is able to adopt a range of techniques which isolate the incident from its micro and macro contexts, thereby individualising and decontextualising the incident.
Table of Contents
CHAPTER 1: Aims, Assumptions and Methods
CHAPTER 2: The Victorian Occupational Health and Safety Offences
CHAPTER 3: Inspection and Investigation
CHAPTER 4: Enforcement Decisions and the Construction of Offences
CHAPTER 5: Finding the Charges Proved: Contested and Uncontested Cases
CHAPTER 6: The Sentencing Framework
CHAPTER 7: The Dynamics of Sentencing
CHAPTER 8: Recent Developments: Countering Pulverisation?
CHAPTER 9: Conclusion: The Constraints of the Form of the Criminal Law
Bibliography
Index