It has long been my experience, as a lawyer advising clients on occupational health and safety and environmental law matters, that environmental regulators seem to be more focused on getting effective results through prosecution than do OHS regulators.

In a number of OHS prosecutions over the years, the prosecutors were much more focused on securing a conviction and extracting a large fine, than it was on remedying the underlying cause of the unsafe act and/or worker injury. They relied on blunt instrument of general deterrents to justify this approach.