Offences against the safety of workers

Published on 22 June 2026

A workplace accident does not always stay within employment and civil law: it may also have a criminal dimension. The Criminal Code punishes the failure to provide the means necessary for workers to carry out their work with adequate safety measures, where this places their life or health in serious danger (articles 316 and 317 of the Criminal Code). It is an offence of endangerment: it can exist even if no harm comes about.

The essentials

• It protects the safety of workers as a legal interest, not just the harmful outcome.
• Liability falls on whoever is legally obliged to provide those means (article 318 for legal persons): the employer, directors, supervisors or prevention officers, according to the actual allocation of duties.
• It may run alongside offences of result (injury or reckless homicide) where the accident does cause harm.

A practical example

Take a construction site where work is carried out at height without the mandatory collective protections (guardrails, nets) and without the appropriate individual equipment having been provided. Even if no worker actually falls, the situation may already constitute the offence under article 316: safety has been placed in serious danger without providing the required means.

If, in addition, a worker falls and is injured, the offence of endangerment may run alongside an offence of result (injury). And liability does not fall automatically on the company as an abstract entity: article 318 directs it to the directors or supervisors who, being able to prevent it, did not take the measures. That is why the risk assessment and the documented provision of means are not a formality, but the best defence.

Why documented prevention matters

The line between compliance and criminal reproach runs through the risk assessment, training and the effective provision of protective means. Showing that there was genuine compliance, and not just compliance on paper, is the best defence, and it is built before the accident, not after.

How I approach it

In these cases, the evidence is almost everything. I reconstruct the facts, check the wording in force on the relevant date and examine the documents that decide the matter: risk assessment, training, the handover of equipment, inspection reports. I take on the defence of the company and those responsible, and also act for the worker when I represent them.

If you are facing something like this, you can read how I handle criminal law matters or write to me for an initial assessment.

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