Recklessness: Being Reckless and Acting Recklessly

The case of R v G may have consigned “objective” Caldwell recklessness to the history books, but this article argues that the development of two species of recklessness was necessitated through the law having to deal with risk-taking in two separate contexts: those of result crime and conduct crime. The mistake was for the law to try to apply a common meaning of recklessness (either subjective or objective) in both contexts. Instead, the law should have taken account of the different psychological processes involved, which entail that distinct forms of mens rea should be applied in each context.