"Chi non fa non falla": la Pubblica Amministrazione dinnanzi al reato di abuso d'ufficio

The paper contains a reflection on the crime of abuse of office, fitting into a broader doctrinal debate around the “collateral effects” of incrimination choices. The topic is developed from an analysis of the application practice of the type of offence in question, considered by many observers as one of the main causes of the phenomenon known as “defensive administration”. The essay also highlights how the crime of abuse of office has become a battleground in which the legislative power is pitted against the judicial power: the former which breathlessly attempts, reform by reform, to delimit the extension of the criminally relevant area to exclude the possibility of judge the discretionary choices of the public administration and the latter which instead claims spaces of intervention which sometimes seem to disregard the textual limits of the normative provision.