Abstract
<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title> <jats:p>This chapter analyses corporate criminal liability through a critique of the relevant provisions of the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act 2023. The extension of the ‘identification doctrine’ to include the criminal conduct of senior managers is criticized, and the case made for greater use of the failure-to-prevent model of corporate criminal liability instead. The way that the ‘senior manager’ provisions of the 2023 Act apply to small—in particular, family—firms is considered in depth, bearing in mind that there are proportionately greater numbers of women and members of black and ethnic minority groups leading small firms as opposed to large ones. The defences to a failure-to-prevent offence of (1) having procedures in place that were ‘reasonable in all the circumstances’ and (2) reasonably having no need for any preventive procedures at all are examined in detail.</jats:p>