Entity Liability and Deterrence: Recent Reforms in Italy

The need for deterrence and repression of “corporate” crimes has led the international community to identify a specific kind of firm criminal liability. Therefore, in such a context, the study and the comparison of the economic theories of corporate and individual criminal liability becomes crucial to determine the more efficient form of deterrence towards the minimisation of social costs, considering their different capacity to internalise the externalities generated by crimes. In this literature our contribution is dedicated to understand if, and in which ways, corporate criminal liability models opportunely reflect the interdependent strategic behaviour of firms and employees’; at the same time, the analysis focuses on how these norms and models evolve in order to take into account firms’ economic incentives. Our analysis is focused on the exposition of the controversial and weak points emerging from the enforcement of the Italian legislative decree 231/2001.