British Food Journal Volume 74 Issue 1 1972

Abstract

Criminal proceedings can only follow the commission of an offence, made so by statute. If an act is not unlawful, it matters little with what motives a person commits it or the consequences; he is outside the law, i.e. criminal law; civil law might have a remedy, but criminal law does not. Even when a criminal offence is committed, it may contain ingredients without which, what would otherwise be a punishable act, becomes guiltless. Most qualifications to guilt are of longstanding, used by parliamentary draftsmen in a wide range of statutes and have acquired reasonably precise judicial meaning. Most relate to intention—wilfully, intentionally, knowingly—and in a few, judicial extension of the popular meaning and usage of the term has occurred to prevent an innocent stance being simulated by a guilty party. “Knowledge” is such an example. The term has been deliberately widened to cover persons who “shut their eyes” to an offence; where a person deliberately refrains from making enquiries, the results of which he would not care to know, this amounts to having such knowledge— constructive knowledge.

Citation

(1972), "British Food Journal Volume 74 Issue 1 1972", British Food Journal, Vol. 74 No. 1, pp. 1-32. https://doi.org/10.1108/eb011684