Liability Fields Across Institutional Contexts

This preprint develops the Institutional Translation Matrix (ITM) as a conceptual framework for analysing how broad harm fields become institutionally processable as possible fields of criminal liability. Its central argument is that a formally general criminal offence does not produce a uniform practical field of possible liability across institutional settings. Although the statutory elements remain constant, visibility, reportability, documentation, attribution, gatekeeping, privacy exposure, alternative regulatory pathways and opportunities for correction vary with institutional context. The framework distinguishes eleven matrix inputs from eleven liability-field outputs and formulates seven directional propositions concerning contextual statutory openness, gatekeeping divergence, documentation duality, alternative-pathway duality, counter-directional translation, attribution fragmentation and classification persistence. These components together constitute Institutional Translation Matrix version 1.0, frozen on 3 July 2026 prior to empirical instantiation. The Swedish offence of psychological violence, introduced in Chapter 4, section 7 b of the Swedish Criminal Code, is used as a strategic legal illustration. Its legislative motivation is primarily associated with intimate partner violence, young relationships, honour-related control and violence against children, while its behavioural formulation contains no express limitation to intimate or otherwise close relationships. Education is used as the principal boundary case because it combines compulsory participation, multiple authority directions, dense institutional documentation and competing school-law, safeguarding, disciplinary, welfare and criminal-law pathways. The article is conceptual and ex ante. It does not predict future judicial application or treat institutional processability as equivalent to criminal liability. Its contribution is to specify the institutional mechanisms through which recognised harm becomes visible, classified, evidenced, attributed, diverted, absorbed, corrected or excluded before final legal attribution and liability determination.