In effect: If an organization did not live up to its duties to keep a person safe, and a person died because of it, it is at risk of prosecution.

Interest in tougher rules to hold corporations responsible for deaths began to rise in Britain in the 1980s.

In particular, the 1987 sinking of the ferry Herald of Free Enterprise, which killed more than 180 people, provoked outrage and led to a government inquiry. Several more transportation accidents in the 1990s added to calls for new legislation.

“We don’t want to blame the worker,” said Celia Wells, a professor of criminal law at the University of Bristol who advised the government on the legislation. “We want to get at the corporation, or those involved in making the decisions.”

Before the law was introduced, organizations could be criminally charged if a person died because of a company’s failings, but there were limitations. For one, prosecutors could not aggregate the actions of multiple people. That made it hard to move against systemic problems in which several people were at fault.