"Le operazioni sotto copertura: ratio politico-criminale, ambito di applicazione e aspettative di efficacia. Un’analisi a partire dalla L. n. 3/2019."

Titolo in inglese: Undercover operations: criminal policy issues, field of application and expected results. An analysis stemming from Law n. 3/2019. The extension of undercover operations to some crimes against public administration, especially corruption crimes, in 2019 has reawakened the criminal policy issues on the use of such intrusive tactics by public agencies of social control. Covert operations are in fact affected by the persisting risk of degeneration into police incitement. The analysis addresses these issues firstly by considering the evolution of the tactics from both a linguistic and a legal point of view. Moreover, since the Italian law limits the use of undercover operations to a series of crimes, it is discussed whether their introduction is tied to the criminological features of such criminal phaenomena or it has represented a symbolic measure to tackle an emergency (real or perceived). International treaties and recommendations, ECHR decisions, EU and Italian law are considered together with the criminological literature regarding the criminal phaenomena included in undercover operations’ field of application. The causes of the dark figure of crimes are also considered to evaluate the role of undercover tactics in reducing it. The Italian approach is compared with the American one, which is based on the institution of the entrapment defense and focuses on the defendant’s predisposition and conduct. The analysis considers also the extension to corruption of some other exceptional criminal and procedural institutions originally established to tackle mafia-type organizations and terrorism.