Policía sin ciencia: La investigación criminal en Portugal: 1880-1936

Abstract

This article examines the birth of the criminal police in Portugal in the context of prevailing scientific traditions that emphasised the biological traits of the criminal as individual, as human type or as social group. Although doctors, physical anthropologists and lawyers announced the coming of a new age of power informed by science and state rationality, in the battle against crime, these discursive intentions stayed far behind the actual practices carried on by criminal police. Science in action was a pretext for disputes inside the different bodies of administration and led to conflicts of jurisdiction with inadequate procedures for cri forensic investigation. Hence the discourse of rationality and surveillance was an argument for keeping the traditional practices and customary powers of police. minal identification in matters like fingerprints analysis, anthropometric archives and forensic investigation. Hence the discourse of rationality and surveillance was an argument for keeping the traditional practices and customary powers of police.