Abstract

DURAO, Susana. Police, security and crime in Portugal: ambiguities and recent passions. Etnográfica [online]. 2011, vol.15, n.1, pp.129-152. ISSN 0873-6561.

This paper results from an ethnographic study of the Portuguese urban police (Polícia de Segurança Pública) and its policing modes. Some of the main considerations about how police activity is sustained by a moral management of urban orders constructed at several scales are highlighted. Moreover, that confers to the “crime” theme a moderate and ambiguous weight. In this vein, we may look at how police officers learn and experience the city, learn the bureaucracy, and how they experience dislocation in their personal trajectories. The paper also proposes a reflection on the makings of criminal statistics, a process that has an increasingly relevant role in policing identities and organization.

Keywords : urban policing; professional identities; criminal statistics; organizational ethnographies.

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