Broad & Lord – Corporate Failure to Prevent Serious and Organised Crimes 27 The European Review of Organised Crime Original Article Corporate Failures to Prevent Serious and Organised Crimes: Foregrounding the “Organisational” Component Nicholas Lord* and Rose Broad ** Abstract: This article analyses a recent policy shift in the UK towards criminalising corporate failures to prevent serious and organised crimes that occur within their organisational structures and business operations. More specifically, through legal and normative compulsion (variously persuasive), the state has sought to change the behaviour of otherwise non-criminal, commercial enterprises by requiring the implementation of internal procedures and systems considered adequate, or reasonable, enough to prevent serious crimes. In this article we focus on the three phenomena that have emerged most prominently in relation to this policy shift: (i) corporate bribery in international business, (ii) the facilitation of (transnational) tax noncompliance and (iii) modern slavery in supply networks. In relation to these three major social issues, we foreground the failures of corporations, their policies, procedures, cultures and structures, to prevent their employees, subsidiaries and associated persons engaging in or facilitating such serious criminal behaviours i.e. the “organisational component”. We conclude by arguing in favour of holding corporations to account for failures to prevent serious crimes within their organisational structure but identify issues in the conceptualisation and operationalisation of such offences. Keywords: serious and organised crime; corporate crime; corporate failure; organisational fault; corporate bribery; tax noncompliance; modern slavery. * Nicholas Lord is a Reader in Criminology in the Centre for Criminology and Criminal Justice in the School of Law at the University of Manchester. He has research expertise in white-collar, financial and organised crimes and frauds. His book Regulating Corporate Bribery in International Business (2014) was the winner of the British Society of Criminology Book Prize 2015. He is currently being funded to research the misuse of corporate vehicles in the concealment of illicit finances, the nature of bribery in the UK, and the distribution and consumption of counterfeit alcohols. Contact: nicholas.lord@manchester.ac.uk