The Dangers of Hanging Baskets: ‘Regulatory Myths’ and Media Representations of Health and Safety Regulation

Abstract

The successful enforcement of health and safety regulation is reliant upon the ability of regulatory agencies to demonstrate the legitimacy of the system of regulatory controls. While ‘big cases’ are central to this process, there are also significant legitimatory implications associated with ‘minor’ cases, including media‐reported tales of pettiness and heavy‐handedness in the interpretation and enforcement of the law. The popular media regularly report stories of ‘regulatory unreasonableness’, and they can pass quickly into mainstream public knowledge. A story's appeal becomes more important than its factual veracity; they are a form of ‘regulatory myth’. This paper discusses the implications of regulatory myths for health and safety regulators, and analyses their challenges for regulators, paying particular attention to the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) which has made concerted efforts to address regulatory myths attaching to its activities. It will be shown that such stories constitute sustained normative challenges to the legitimacy of the regulator, and political challenges to the burgeoning regulatory state, because they reflect some of the key concerns of late‐modern society.

Naming without shaming: The publication of sanctions in the Dutch financial market

“…Publicity about enforcement activities may contribute to the accountability, transparency, and public legitimacy of enforcement agencies (Hawkins 2002; Hood 2007; Almond 2009). This article has explored, through a case study of the publication of sanctions in the Dutch financial market, the impact of the publication of sanctions on the most important instrumental goal of enforcement: promoting compliance.…”

“…More important, responsive regulation regards enforcement action as an opportunity to communicate a moral message and thus contribute to the process of creating consensus about the meaning of compliance in complex settings (Fisse & Braithwaite 1983; Parker 2006). Enforcement may raise consciousness about the problem that regulation addresses, and relate to feelings of obligation and emotions of shame (Murphy & Harris 2007; Almond 2009; Feldman 2009; Thornton et al . 2009).…”

Regulation and governance versus criminology: Disciplinary divides, intersections, and opportunities

“…The regulatory impacts of publicity sanctions and "naming-and-shaming" processes are also undermined by the capacity of larger offenders to utilize their resources to counter negative publicity via portrayal as legitimate equal parties in pro-business national media. At the same time, smaller businesses continue to be portrayed as "rogue traders" in consumer-oriented local media ( van Erp 2013), and regulators are portrayed as overzealous in general (Almond 2009). By discursively constructing corporate crimes as ambiguous, news media contribute to a societal climate in which corporate crime is accepted as a fact of life (Wright et al 1995;Rosoff 2007;Williams 2008), while similar acts of wrongdoing by public institutions are censured much more heavily (Greer & McLaughlin 2017).…”

Regulatory inspection and the changing legitimacy of health and safety

“…36-43). The consequences of this approach have included a ninety-five (95) percent decline in rates of Local Authority inspection since 2009(HSE 2014b, which also reflects the climate of austerity within British politics during this period. This tied into the pursuit of a broader political narrative equating risk with progress and social freedom, and precaution with irrationality and political illiberalism (Dodds 2006, p. 535), and which insisted on the use of market-oriented, quantified approaches to regulatory decisionmaking (Black 2005;Rothstein et al 2013).…”