Assembleia da República Greenlights Lei de Política Criminal 2026-2028 With Prison-Crew Forest-Cleaning Mandate, Stop-and-Search Powers in Zonas de Criminalidade de Impacto Social and a Priority-Crime List Headed by Arson

The Assembleia da República (Parliament) passed the biennial Lei de Política Criminal (Criminal Policy Law) for the 2026-2028 cycle on 12 June 2026, after a final-form vote in plenary that put two flagship measures on the statute book: a prison-work programme that mandates inmate crews to clean and maintain forests and woodland as a fire-prevention tool, and an explicit police authorisation to conduct revistas (pat-downs) of persons and bags in delimited zonas de criminalidade de impacto social (zones of socially impactful crime). The diploma drew favourable votes from PSD, Chega, IL and CDS-PP, opposition from Livre, PCP and BE, and abstentions from PS, PAN and JPP — the same coalition geometry that has been carrying the Justice Ministry's enforcement agenda through the 2026 session.

The Lei de Política Criminal is the rolling biennial framework that sets prosecution priorities for the Ministério Público (Public Prosecutor's Office), defines crime-prevention focus areas for the Polícia Judiciária (Judicial Police) and the Polícia de Segurança Pública (Public Security Police), and gives the Direção-Geral de Reinserção e Serviços Prisionais (DGRSP, Directorate-General for Reintegration and Prison Services) its operating mandate. The 2026-2028 cycle replaces the 2024-2026 framework on a one-year-late calendar — the original government proposal, approved in Council of Ministers in February 2026, had been drafted as a 2025-2027 diploma but was corrected in committee specialty to align with the actual entry-into-force window.

The Prison-Work Forest-Cleaning Track

The headline operational shift sits inside a new mandate to the DGRSP to "develop and execute programmes of social reintegration and prison work that include activities of public utility" — including, explicitly, "the cleaning, maintenance and valorisation of lands, forests and forest areas." The mechanism plugs into the broader fogos rurais (rural-fire) prevention chain that the Ministério da Administração Interna runs through the DECIR (Dispositivo Especial de Combate a Incêndios Rurais, Special Rural-Fire Combat Apparatus) calendar, the Charlie phase of which mobilised 13,335 operational personnel and 78 aerial means for the 15-30 June window.

The Government had pre-positioned the prison-crew measure in February 2026, when Council of Ministers approved a pilot to deploy inmates onto the Paisagem Cultural de Sintra (Sintra Cultural Landscape) Unesco-listed estate for landscape maintenance work. The Lei de Política Criminal now lifts that pilot into the priority-statute layer and binds DGRSP execution to its delivery, rather than leaving it to ad-hoc ministerial protocols. Crimes de incêndio florestal (forest-fire crimes) appear inside the priority-prevention list — alongside terrorism, organised crime, domestic violence, sexual abuse of minors, corruption and human trafficking — which directs the Ministério Público to channel investigative resources toward those dossiers ahead of the lower-priority caseload.

Stop-and-Search Powers in Delimited Zones

The second new tool authorises the PSP and the Guarda Nacional Republicana (GNR, National Republican Guard) to conduct identity checks and personal pat-downs of persons in delimited zones designated as zonas de criminalidade de impacto social — geographic perimeters in which the public-order authority has flagged a recurrent concentration of serious crime. The framework mirrors prior special-zone instruments used during major events and at transport hubs but extends the regime to settled urban perimeters on a renewable basis. Civil-liberties critics — Livre, BE and the PCP — argued in plenary debate that the perimeter-designation criteria are too elastic and that the absence of judicial pre-authorisation cuts against the constitutional safeguards in Article 27.º of the Constituição da República. The PS abstention reflected the same reservations on procedural grounds without a no-vote.

The legal architecture of the new revista power sits adjacent to the Lei n.º 5/2002 regime for organised-crime financial investigations and the standing PSP and GNR identification powers under Lei n.º 49/2008 and the Lei Orgânica of each force. The Lei de Política Criminal does not itself create a new criminal offence; it gives the police the priority-zone authorisation framework within which existing identification and search powers can be exercised on a perimeter basis without individualised reasonable-suspicion threshold tests.

The Priority-Crime List and the Ministério Público Mandate

The diploma binds the Ministério Público to a priority-crime list that funnels investigative resources and pre-trial detention petitions toward a defined catalogue: violent crime against persons, domestic violence, sexual abuse of minors, organised crime, terrorism, human trafficking, corruption, crimes against the integrity of the State, money laundering, cybercrime, fogos florestais (forest fires), and economic crime with cross-border ramifications. Below the priority tier sits a secondary preventive-focus list — including motor-vehicle theft, drug trafficking in metropolitan transport corridors and high-impact urban robbery — which directs PSP and GNR patrol planning rather than carrying procedural privileges.

The Lei de Política Criminal cycle lands at a moment when the criminal-justice system is already under pressure from a separate Council of Europe Committee of Ministers decision issued on 12 June telling Portugal it stands "ready for new actions" unless tangible progress is delivered on the 103.4% prison-occupancy rate by September 2027. The prison-work mandate inside the Lei de Política Criminal does not directly address the overcrowding ratio — it operates on the activities of inmates already inside the system rather than on the population denominator — but it does plug into the social-reintegration framework that the DGRSP cites as its central tool for managing the population on a rolling basis.

The Coalition Math and the 2028 Renewal Window

The PSD-Chega-IL-CDS yes-vote bloc is the same configuration that delivered the OE2026 budget, the OE2027 cativações tightening circular and the Lei dos Estrangeiros restrictions package — a recurring four-party operational coalition on Justice and public-order matters that does not extend to other policy clusters where the PS has been a swing partner. The Livre-PCP-BE no-vote left tracks the civil-liberties caucus's standing line on perimeter-policing extensions; the PS-PAN-JPP abstention bloc reflects the centre-left's tactical decision not to block the prison-work mandate while flagging the revista regime's procedural exposure.

The 2026-2028 cycle now runs to the end of 2028, at which point the next biennial review will land on either the same coalition geometry or a successor parliament after the 2029 legislative cycle.

Sources: Assembleia da República plenary record (12 June 2026), Diário da República (pending publication), Conselho de Ministros communiqué of 20 February 2026, RTP, Observador, Lusa, Ministério da Justiça.