The paper explores the evolution of economic preventive measures under the Italian Anti-mafia Code towards a “mild” and “therapeutic" paradigm, no longer centred exclusively on confiscation. Within this framework, two distinct models can be identified: an administrative model, encompassing anti-mafia interdictions and emerging forms of cooperative prevention, and a judicial model, reflected in court-ordered management arrangements designed to restore the legality of infiltrated enterprises. Adopting a functional perspective, the analysis brings to light the tension between the manifest and latent functions of these instruments. Alongside their stated therapeutical purposes, they often operate as mechanisms for moralising corporate conduct and for steering economic behaviour. In conclusion, the paper argues that restoring legality is essential to overcome this underlying tension. This requires ensuring transparency, foreseeability, and consistency between aims and outcomes, together with a broader cultural renewal towards an “economy of criminal law”, so as to prevent these measures from evolving into instruments of moral or bureaucratic overreach.