Systemic Failure: Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse

• In Event: Sexual Offenders and Responses to Them

Abstract

The Australian Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse Criminal Law paper (2016) devotes only ten pages of an 800-page consultation paper to institutional or corporate criminal law reforms, with the bulk of attention on individual perpetrators and victims. Why is collective criminal responsibility so neglected even by a body charged with institutional abuse? This paper draws on philosophies of wickedness and horror to overturn centuries of traditional criminal law conceptualisation to enable criminalisation of institutions for systemic failure. Through an analysis of Royal Commission case studies, this paper will provide insight into how and why systemic failures come about in complex organisations, i.e., a mechanics of wickedness. These philosophies will also contribute an account of how and why these systemic failures can be sufficiently blameworthy to justify the imposition of criminal sanctions, i.e., a normative account of culpability.

Author

• Penny Crofts, University of Technology Sydney