Arbetsmiljöbrottet - ett brott med pedagogiskt syfte?

Sammanfattning: When the work environment crime was introduced in the Swedish Penal Code, it was with the expressed pedagogical purpose that it would highlight the seriousness of the crime by specifically pointing out the work environment managers' extensive responsibility and ensuring maintenance of risk and injury prevention through an effective criminal sanction system with such sharpness that the importance of complying with the rules in force is clear. Despite the fact that the section has been criticized, by the Swedish Law Council as well as several consultative bodies at the introduction of the section and by Straffanvändningsutredningen in 2013, it remains. Work environment crime is part of economic crime, theories of economic crime indicate that legislation and law enforcement take a stereotyping perspective on crime, moral blame, perpetrators and victims and tend to contextualize crime in the economic-industrial sphere while traditional crimes are decontextualized. Such a picture of crime can indicate that the crimes, if they even are perceived as crimes, are considered complex and as if their effects have no perpetrator. These theories form the basis for the analysis of the provision's introduction, construction and application. When the injuries are due to risky events rather than individual events, there is a constant risk of injury, who is injured can usually not be predicted. This causes problems when appointing a perpetrator. The perpetrator may be on the periphery, far from the victim in both time and space. This does not correspond to the narrative of criminal law, which presupposes a clear perpetrator, a clear victim and a clear act. Nor does this agree with the picture of the relationship that exists between ideal crime victims and perpetrators. What the thesis shows is that the section does not fulfill its purpose and despite the fact that the crime is made explicit, it can lead to cementing a picture of economic crime as a complex, of injuries in the workplace as accidents and of perpetrators of economic crime as less reprehensible and furthermore an invisibility of the victims. This cementing takes place, among other things, through the linguistic classification of the provision, among other things by describing injuries as a result of work environment offenses as accidents by the legislature, the law enforcer, the authorities and the general language. It has thus become an accepted concept for describing such events, which in no way needs to reflect reality or be immutable.