CRIME AND INTERPERSONAL VIOLENCE IN PORTUGAL (C. 1850-1910)

Abstract

Covering the criminality recorded in Portugal in the period between 1850 and 1910, this study seeks to demonstrate how the use of interpersonal violence was a strongly implanted element in Portuguese society, characterising behaviours that the authorities, particularly the police and judicial authorities, sought to counteract, through their repression and penalisation. In this way, the law clearly served to try to implant a society in which the recourse to violence, in all its forms and exercised against whoever it might be, became a less frequent behaviour and, when persistent, was classified as crime.