Il tempo nella tipicità. La misura dell'attualità dell'offesa = The time into the crime typicity. The measure of the actuality of the offence

Time is a factor that reflects an aspect of reality which must find its place in the structure of the gesamter Rechtszustand, like every other aspect. The «statute of limitations» is that element of the complex case which captures a part of the image of the time of the offence, because it assigns legal relevance to the simple temporal course post factum with extinguishing effects of the depreciation that projects itself beyond the crime offense threshold. Time has a value in reality, so it cannot be legally ignored and the normative choice is to attribute to it the ability to extinguish the offense to the juridical good, according to predetermined terms, and in an abstract way, according to the intensity of the social alarm that the assumed event raises in democratic society. Therefore, the limitation is instrumental to the regulation of the persistence of the offense post factum patratum, thus acting similarly to the dynamics of political-criminal discretion that support one-off choices of abolition (total or partial) of crime.