The offense definition as a screenplay of evil: The rise and fall of visual criminal law

The essay discusses the notion of Criminal law “as literature”. It assumes that the “offense definition” (Tipo, Fattispecie, Tatbestand) is a narrative text; one that portrays narratives capable of producing imaginative thinking through storytelling. For centuries, reading crime definitions meant being able to picture what evildoing/wrongdoing looked like. Building on the knowledge and terminology of figurative arts, the author analyzes how images and words translate concepts such as evil or wrongfulness into visible shapes, through a process of “rendering”. However, in contemporary societies, legal drafting based on “icons of evil” is under serious stress. Given the increasing de-materialization of reality and social relations, as well as the growing technical complexity of regulatory legislation, it has become necessary to draft offense definitions following new semiotic criteria and establishing a new “poetics” (aesthetic theory) for the Criminal law. After considering the new range of possibilities offered by digital signs (as bar codes) and artificial intelligence, the analysis concludes that it is possible to describe evildoing/wrongdoing using the creative resources of metaphors and imagination.