Ler História 53 / 2007
Dossier: Crime and Repression
Maria João Vaz
Preventing the crime: the Civil Police force in Lisbon
Maria Rita Lino Garnel
The spaces of violence in Lisbon in the 1st RepublicMaria José Moutinho Santos
Juveniles in Oporto: between the helplessness and crime (1880-1911)Susana Serpa Silva
Alcoholism and criminality in the 19th Century. The case of São Miguel island (The Azores)Ana Maria Pina
Criminals, children and savages. Human evil, in Portuguese culture, in the sunset of the 19th CenturyTiago Pires Marques
From the «criminal personality» to the «perverse criminal». Doctors, lawyers and theologians in the crisis of the positivism
Studies
Paula Raquel Nascimento Ferreira
Functional evolution of the centre of Viseu (1950-2001)
Debates
Carlos Leone
The West, the war and the social sciences and humanities: recalling a controversial PortugueseJosé Barata-Moura
Magalhães-Vilhena: a first publication of unpublished
Memory Materials
Nuno Martins
Holders ministerial in toponymy of Lisbon (1820-1856)
Abstracts
Ler História 53 / 2007
Preventing the crime: the Civil Police force in LisbonIn the implementation of the the law enforcement and punishment of its offenders, the power creates real mechanisms that allow to make these actions effective. In this sense,in the 19th Century, the importance of the creation of modern police bodies is stressed in all the western world. It is an international movement which Portugal accompanies. The first Civil Police forces were created, in 1867, in Lisbon and Oporto. An high discretionary and coercive power is delegated to their members, being the prevention of the criminality described as its main function. Who are the men who were policing the biggest city of the Kingdom, where criminality was causing the biggest fears? This is question the Author tries to answer in this article, drawing the social profile of the policemen of the Civil Police of Lisbon.
The spaces of violence in Lisbon in the 1st RepublicThis article aims at correlating violence, victims and the city of Lisbon, in the years of the First Republican Regime (1910-1926), by studying the forensic expert examinations of victims, held in Lisbon in the years of 1912 and 1926. Public opinion was worrying with what seemed a great increase in crime, particularly in the most central, old and more densely inhabited areas of the capital and claimed for more police attention. The growing number of police stations and policemen, the more repressive intervention of policemen and court magistrates was deemed necessary not only in fighting crime and criminals but was also designated to control the behaviour of the poorer. And thus, the elites in power were wilfully forgetting that conflicts, even if violent, were a traditional and most important part of human and social interaction.
Juveniles in Oporto: between the helplessness and crime (1880-1911)
From the last quarter of the 19th Century to World War I, important reflections were produced around the situation of the juvenile delinquents and in moral danger, a complex problem that included in its discussion an international multidisciplinal elite. This reflection was also produced in Portugal, leading to a set of initiatives aiming at the juvenile to be protected and to be corrected. This study analyses, in the context of the reality of the city of Oporto, how some of the questions were managed in the field of the juveniles in risk, or delinquents. Speeches are analysed in the context of the same time, all of them produced in a heavy weight social reality, which contributes to the history making of the juvenile delinquents in risk.
Alcoholism and criminality in the 19th Century. The case of São Miguel island (The Azores)From the perception of the alcoholism as social problem – either in terms of behaviours, or in the context of the public health – to the criminalization of the drunkenness, a long process has gone, in Western Europe, which began in the end of the 18th. Century and finished in the last days of the 19th Century. Taking as study base the island of São Miguel, in the archipelago of The Azores, the Author tries to explain how the alcoholism problem was viewed by the public opinion and the authorities, along that century, and how the legal speech and the criminal law evolved in the interpretation of this phenomenon, intrinsically connected with the criminal violence.
Criminals, children and savages. Human evil, in Portuguese culture, in the sunset of the 19th CenturyThis article analyses the perspectives on crime and the criminal of three Portuguese intellectuals of the end of the 19th Century: Basílio Freire, Afonso Costa and Ferreira Deusdado. Only Basílio, physician, defends criminal anthropology and its vision of the criminal. Afonso Costa, lawyer, as well as Deusdado, educationalist, refuse it. While for Deusdado, the criminal is someone who chooses the wrong way, for Costa, the criminal is the product of an unfair society. Only the socialism, with the abolition of the property, can solve the problem of the crime. Such differences of opinion are not explained by the partisan options. Basílio and Costa are republican, Deusdado is monarchist. The question lays in the fact that Medicine is deeply penetrated by the doctrines of criminal anthropology, while Law and Pedagogy are areas that maintain ideas with enlightment era roots
From the «criminal personality» to the «perverse criminal». Doctors, lawyers and theologians in the crisis of the positivismIn this article we analyse the scientific failure of the positivist criminal anthropology and the attempt to revitalize it, in the 20s and the 30s of the 20th. Century, through the sciences of psychology and endocrinology. On the other side, we look at the evolution of juridical dogmatic thought and observe the development of certain concepts with a theological origin. Converging in a particular representation of the criminal, these discourses help us to understand the main institutional innovations in the criminal law field in this period. We address the transnational, scientific and juridical, domain of which Portugal was part, and in which Fascist Italy emerged as the main reference.
Functional evolution of the centre of Viseu (1950-2001)Located in the crossroads of two important road axles – A24 and A25 –, the city of Viseu assumes in the present a central position regarding the surrounding regions. It became more accessible and attractive in what concerns to new investments, registering a strong commercial and property energy, with the consequent changes, as well at the population level as morfo-functional. This article focuses these great changes both in the distribution and in the functional organization of any urban area, including the city centre, transformations that intensified in the last decades. We can look at the transformation of central Viseu as a more densified commercial and services space, consolidating its characteristics of a centre.