Penitentiary risk and prohibitionist spirit

Abstract

In Europe, Portugal is at the top when we refer to perverse penitentiary indicators. Although Portugal possesses one of the lowest crime rates in the European Union, the country imprisons an amount of detainees that, in Europe, is among the highest. This is due in part to the influence of the North American correctional policy, which incarcerates 2 million prisoners and detains more than 5 million people with judicially limited rights. Other contributing factors to Portugal’s relative supremacy in this area are the particular characteristics of the Portuguese judicial process, slow and formalist. It is estimated that at least half of the prisoners in Portugal use “drugs” in jail and around three quarters are in prison for reasons that are either directly or indirectly related with the trafficking of illegal narcotics.