Criminalising Carelessness?
Comparative and Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Criminal Liability for Inadvertent Negligence

Can we punish people for crimes they didn’t even know they committed? Ultimately, the answer to this question lies at the core of criminal liability for inadvertent negligence. But legal systems respond very differently. Although most civil law jurisdictions seem to have no problem with criminal liability for inadvertent negligence, its criminalisation is controversial in common law jurisdictions. And even though most Anglo-American criminal law theorists firmly hold onto the principle of actus non facit reum, nisi mens sit rea, criminal liability for negligence, and even strict liability, is becoming inexorably widespread in statutory law. Surprisingly, despite the subject having been long discussed in Anglo-American and German criminal law scholarship, there has been scant exchange between them, and the two legal systems have benefited too little from each other’s insights.