Abstract:
In this chapter, I seek to do four things: establish the shift from prosecution to rehabilitation; suggest some reasons for the shift; explain why, having investigated many cases where a health practitioner could have been prosecuted for manslaughter (or a lesser criminal offence), I now support only a very limited role for the criminal law in response to adverse events in health care; and argue that the pendulum may have swung too far in New Zealand, at the expense of proper accountability for injured patients and their families.
