After disasters like Rana, or the fire at another Bangladeshi garment factory in November that killed 112 people, there is a tendency to play detective, to focus on the culprit, whether it be the owner, corruption or lax laws and missing enforcement. News article after news article focuses on finding the smoking gun, as if there were only one cause and as if minus that cause, those workers would be safe today.

Yes, we seek justice. But in our rush to solve the case or help the victims, we refuse to see the real culprits: the global apparel industry and ourselves for being complicit in supporting or ignoring a system of trade and offshoring largely designed to bypass regulatory policy of every stripe, while putting maximum profit before people.

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Keywords: supply chain risk management, supply chain management, apparel supply chain, Bangladesh apparel industry, apparel industry safety violations