Gonçalo Rocha Gonçalves

This article examines the reform of the Portuguese police system during the 1860s. In this period, the nature of police institutions, functions and practices became a main political issue with the reform movement culminating in the founding of Polícia Civil in urban settlements in 1867 while failing in a project to establish a national gendarmerie. However, this still represented more than just institutional reform ; at stake was a re-examination of police functions, with a new notion of ‘public safety’ and the rationales behind policing practices, with ‘prevention’ and ‘emergency’ as the new guiding concepts. The article concludes that in Portugal, the political culture and the circulation police models between national jurisdictions provide better explanations for police reform than actual concerns about disorder and crime.

Cet article étudie la réforme du système policier portugais au cours des années 1860. À cette époque, la nature des institutions policières, leurs fonctions et leurs pratiques devinrent une question politique majeure, dans le contexte du mouvement de réforme qui culmina, en 1867, dans la fondation de la police civile dans les villes, mais échoua à mettre en place une gendarmerie nationale. On ne peut cependant réduire cette réforme à son aspect institutionnel, car ce sont d’une part les fonctions policières qui étaient en cause - avec l’apparition de la notion nouvelle de « sécurité publique » - et, d’autre part, les logiques des pratiques, avec les nouveaux principes directeurs de « prévention » et d’ « urgence ». En conclusion, l’article insiste sur le fait qu’au Portugal, ce sont la culture politique et la circulation des modèles policiers entre différents pays qui, davantage que la préoccupation pour les questions de désordre et de criminalité, expliquent la réforme de la police.

This thesis examines the development of a modern urban police force – professional and civil – and its role in the everyday life of the Portuguese capital city, between the start of the city’s modern growth in the 1860s and the Republican Revolution of October 1910. It begins by examining the political process of institutional reform during the early 1860s, which led to the creation of Polícia Civil de Lisboa in 1867. Using the daily orders of Polícia Civil as the anchor source, the thesis concentrates attention on the processes of organizational shaping that marked the development of this police force. The social and cultural diversity within this police force is examined by considering both the rank-file and also the police leadership and the professional specialization that began emerging in the end of the century. But the main focus of this work is on the beat policeman. The thesis examines the organizational strategies devised to ‘fabricate’ a civilised policeman, as well as their daily enforcement. The evolution of the police’s manpower and its deployment throughout the city’s territory, together with the arrangement of the working routines, demonstrate that the police increasingly became a central actor in the mediation of social relations in the city. On the part of the population, the growing expectation of the police’s availability to intervene was another key factor in the general evolution of the ‘idea of police’ during this period. Finally, this thesis argues that, while the population became used to ‘calling the police’, popular criticisms of police actions were also central in the shaping of policing practice.