Corporate violence at the conjuncture: criminal liability and the deaths of three Canadian Pacific railway workers

Abstract

This article critically examines structural impediments to the enforcement of laws that criminalize corporations for negligently killing workers and/or the public. Drawing empirically from a case in which three Canadian Pacific Railway workers were killed on the job, and from subsequent questions about the company’s negligence as the cause of death, as well as theoretical insights from the literature on conjunctural analysis, we explore the cultural, political, and economic relations of power that effectively insulate corporations from criminal justice scrutiny.