Confusing criteria

How do they do it? what criteria of calculation do judges use to determine the ‘punishment’ of employers whose criminal breaches of health and safety law lead to the death of an employee?

Lord Uist, in fining the scottish Fire and Rescue service (sFRs) £54,000 for its role in the death of ewan williamson, a 35-year- old firefighter, outlined his criteria: ‘This case, which involves an isolated failing, falls very much at the lower end of the scale of criminal culpability. There has been a prompt acceptance of responsibility and co-operation of the highest degree.’ (Mail).

He appears to marginalise the fact that the ‘lower end of the scale of criminal culpability’ reflected serious and dangerous breaches of health and safety l aw, which directly contributed to the avoidable death of Mr williamson.

Furthermore, the ‘prompt acceptance of responsibility’ t ook six years and was motivated by the employer’s determination to avoid the 12week trial the Crown office had put in place.

when cases of profound negligence, stupid criminality and blasé, but calamitous breaches of health and safety law, enter the slippery world of lawyercraft, fudgefix and judgethink, injustice can readily follow.

drivers who kill ‘endure’ community service; murder becomes manslaughter and careerist thugs are thereby ‘punished’ with single-figure sentences; serious assault morphs into the status of shoplifting and aspiring ‘hardmen’ are consequently compelled to sweep a street, paint a fence and change a lightbulb.

employers who refine the art of corner cutting training and safety procedures, t hus contributing to the death of an employee, can relax and anticipate a modest fine, given that their failings were ‘very much at the lower end of the scale of criminal culpability’.

Faced with those examples of lawyercraft, fudgefix and judgethink, s t udents of t he philosophical foundations of scotland’s legal system might anxiously conclude that the ‘system’ is morally emaciated — and, therefore, prone to produce outcomes reflecting profound and offensive injustice.

THOMAS CROOKS, Edinburgh.