Strict Liability Within Society

Assignment 3.6

Strict liability is an offence which means that the defendant can be guilty if he does the act required for the crime, even if he does not have the intention to do the crime (requires no proof of mens rea). It means that the guilt will be proved as soon as it is proved that the person committed the actus reus. Strict liability crimes are often referred to as ‘regulatory offences’. Strict liability will be applied in areas of social concern for example, underage alcohol abuse, parking on a yellow line or littering because it will promote the purpose of the statute by encouraging potential offenders to take extra precautions against committing the prohibited act the presumption of mens rea can be rebutted. In the case of Harrow a young boy purchased a lottery ticket even though he was underage. This case concerned a lot of social concern (underage gambling) therefore it is automatically a strict liability offence.

Some crimes have to be under strict liability because if the courts were too attempt to prove the mens rea of each crime the courts would be overloaded with people disputing  many reasons to why the offence was committed which wastes court time. By making the offences strict liability the difficulty of establishing mens rea is removed.

In the case of Gammon (Hong Kong) Ltd v Attorney-General the defendants were involved in building works in Hong Kong. Part of a building they were constructing fell down, and it was found that the collapse had occurred because the builders had failed to follow the original plans exactly. The Hong Kong building regulation prohibited deviating in any substantial way for such plans, and the defendants were charged with breaching the regulations, an offence punishable with a fine of up to $250,000 or three years imprisonment. On appeal they argued that they were not liable because they didn’t know the changes they made were substantial ones. However, the Privy Council held that the relevant regulations created offences of strict liability and the convictions were upheld.

In B (a Minor) v DPP (2000) it was established that when interpreting a statute there is always a presumption of law that mens rea is required for an offence. The House of Lords confirmed that there was a presumption that on offence required mens rea, that needed to be a ‘compellingly clear implication’ that Parliament intended the offence to be one of strict liability.