In the North American legal justice system system

Law

Law is a system of rules and guidelines which are enforced through social institutions to govern behavior, wherever possible. It shapes politics, economics and society in numerous ways and serves as a social mediator of relations between people. Contract law regulates everything from buying a bus...

 and in US Occupational Safety and Health

Occupational safety and health

Occupational safety and health is a cross-disciplinary area concerned with protecting the safety, health and welfare of people engaged in work or employment. The goal of all occupational safety and health programs is to foster a safe work environment...

 regulations,
willful violation (also called 'willful non-compliance') is an "act done voluntarily with either
an intentional disregard of, or plain indifference to," the requirements of Acts, regulations, statutes or relevant workplace policies. This is described with slightly different emphasis in an OSHA

Occupational Safety and Health Administration

The United States Occupational Safety and Health Administration is an agency of the United States Department of Labor. It was created by Congress of the United States under the Occupational Safety and Health Act, signed by President Richard M. Nixon, on December 29, 1970...

 technical manual that a "willful violation exists under the Act where the evidence shows either an intentional violation of the Act or plain indifference to its requirements."

Criminal Recklessness is similarly described in Black's Law Dictionary

Black's Law Dictionary

Black's Law Dictionary is the most widely used law dictionary in the United States. It was founded by Henry Campbell Black. It is the reference of choice for definitions in legal briefs and court opinions and has been cited as a secondary legal authority in many U.S...

 as "Conduct whereby the actor does not desire harmful consequence but...foresees the possibility and consciously takes the risk," or alternatively as "a state of mind in which a person does not care about the consequences of his or her actions."

See also

• Willful blindness
  Willful blindness
  Willful blindness is a term used in law to when an individual seeks to avoid civil or criminal liability for a wrongful act by intentionally putting himself in a position where he will be unaware of facts which would render him liable.For example, in a number of cases,...
  
   (also called 'willful ignorance' or 'contrived ignorance')
• Criminal negligence
  Criminal negligence
  In the criminal law, criminal negligence is one of the three general classes of mens rea element required to constitute a conventional as opposed to strict liability offense. It is defined as an act that is:-Concept:...
  
  
• Recklessness (law)
• Health and safety law
  Health and safety law
  Health and safety law is a body of law that protects the health, safety and welfare of the general public and certain defined sectors of the population such as employees...
  
  
• Negligence
  Negligence
  Negligence is a failure to exercise the care that a reasonably prudent person would exercise in like circumstances. The area of tort law known as negligence involves harm caused by carelessness, not intentional harm.According to Jay M...
  
  
• Carelessness (criminal)
  Carelessness
  Carelessness is lack of concern about the consequences of an action, and by extension, the behavior that results from that lack of concern.Carelessness has been hypothesized to be one possible cause of accident-proneness.-External links:* *...
  
  
• Omission (criminal law)
• Regulatory offences
  Regulatory offences
  A regulatory offence or quasi-criminal offence is a class of crime in which the standard for proving culpability has been lowered so a mens rea element is not required...
  
  
• Culpability
  Culpability
  Culpability descends from the Latin concept of fault . The concept of culpability is intimately tied up with notions of agency, freedom and free will...
  
  
• Plausible deniability
  Plausible deniability
  Plausible deniability is, at root, credible ability to deny a fact or allegation, or to deny previous knowledge of a fact. The term most often refers to the denial of blame in chains of command, where upper rungs quarantine the blame to the lower rungs, and the lower rungs are often inaccessible,...
  
  
• Reckless endangerment
  Endangerment
  In US law, endangerment comprises several types of crimes involving conduct that is wrongful and reckless or wanton, and likely to produce death or grievous bodily harm to another person....
  
  
• Reasonable person
  Reasonable person
  The reasonable person is a legal fiction of the common law that represents an objective standard against which any individual's conduct can be measured...
  
  
• Depraved heart murder
  Depraved heart murder
  Depraved-heart murder, also known as depraved-indifference murder, is an American legal term for an action that demonstrates a "callous disregard for human life" and results in death...
  
  
• Intention (criminal law)
• Duty of care
  Duty of care
  In tort law, a duty of care is a legal obligation imposed on an individual requiring that they adhere to a standard of reasonable care while performing any acts that could foreseeably harm others. It is the first element that must be established to proceed with an action in negligence. The claimant...
  
  
• Breach of duty in English law
  Breach of duty in English law
  In English tort law, there can be no liability in negligence unless the claimant establishes both that they were owed a duty of care by the defendant, and that there has been a breach of that duty...
  
  
• Calculus of negligence
  Calculus of negligence
  In the United States, the calculus of negligence, or Hand rule or Hand formula, is a term coined by Judge Learned Hand and describes a process for determining whether a legal duty of care has been breached . The original description of the calculus was in U.S. v...
  
  
• Good Samaritan law
  Good Samaritan law
  Good Samaritan laws are laws or acts protecting those who choose to serve and tend to others who are injured or ill. They are intended to reduce bystanders' hesitation to assist, for fear of being sued or prosecuted for unintentional injury or wrongful death...
  
  
• Rescue doctrine
  Rescue doctrine
  In the USA, the rescue doctrine of the law of torts holds that if a tortfeasor creates a circumstance that places the tort victim in danger, the tortfeasor is liable not only for the harm caused to the victim, but also the harm caused to any person injured in an effort to rescue that victim. This...
  
  
• Duty to rescue
  Duty to rescue
  A duty to rescue is a concept in tort law that arises in a number of cases, describing a circumstance in which a party can be held liable for failing to come to the rescue of another party in peril. However, in the United States, it is rarely formalized in statutes which would bring the penalty of...
  
  
• Infraction
• Contravention
  Contravention
  In many civil law countries contravention is a less serious crime, similar to misdemeanor in common law countries. The term is also used in Australian law...
  
  
• Regulatory offences
  Regulatory offences
  A regulatory offence or quasi-criminal offence is a class of crime in which the standard for proving culpability has been lowered so a mens rea element is not required...
  
  
• Mens rea
  Mens rea
  Mens rea is Latin for "guilty mind". In criminal law, it is viewed as one of the necessary elements of a crime. The standard common law test of criminal liability is usually expressed in the Latin phrase, actus non facit reum nisi mens sit rea, which means "the act does not make a person guilty...
  
    (Guilty Mind)
• Actus reus
  Actus reus
  Actus reus, sometimes called the external element or the objective element of a crime, is the Latin term for the "guilty act" which, when proved beyond a reasonable doubt in combination with the mens rea, "guilty mind", produces criminal liability in the common law-based criminal law jurisdictions...
  
    (Guilty Act)
• Imputation (law)
  Imputation (law)
  In law, the principle of imputation or attribution underpins the concept that ignorantia juris non excusat—ignorance of the law does not excuse. All laws are published and available for study in all developed states...
  
  
• Automatism (law)
  Automatism (law)
  -Definition:Automatism is a rarely used criminal defence. It is one of the mental condition defences that relate to the mental state of the defendant. Automatism can be seen variously as lack of voluntariness, lack of culpability or excuse...
  
  
• Excuse (legal)
• Tort Law
  Tort
  A tort, in common law jurisdictions, is a wrong that involves a breach of a civil duty owed to someone else. It is differentiated from a crime, which involves a breach of a duty owed to society in general...
  
  
• English tort law
  English tort law
  English tort law concerns civil wrongs, as distinguished from criminal wrongs, in the law of England and Wales. Some wrongs are the concern of the state, and so the police can enforce the law on the wrongdoers in court – in a criminal case...
  
  
• Treble damages
  Treble damages
  Treble damages, in law, is a term that indicates that a statute permits a court to triple the amount of the actual/compensatory damages to be awarded to a prevailing plaintiff, generally in order to punish the losing party for willful conduct. Treble damages are a multiple of, and not an addition...
  
  
• Punitive damages
  Punitive damages
  Punitive damages or exemplary damages are damages intended to reform or deter the defendant and others from engaging in conduct similar to that which formed the basis of the lawsuit...