8 Is Criminalization Bad For Safety?

The sheer threat of judicial involvement is enough to make people think twice about coming forward with information about an incident that they were involved in.1 Just imagine how the colleagues of the nurse in the prologue may have felt about this. The nurse, after all, stepped forward voluntarily with her view on the death of the infant. As long as there is fear that information provided in good faith can end up being used by a legal system, practitioners are not likely to engage in open reporting.

Many admit that they will only file a report when there is the chance that other parties will disclose the incident (e.g. an air traffic controller may think that a pilot will report a close call if s/he does ...

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