Conselho Superior do MP Wants Porto's Specialised Domestic-Violence Section Shut Down — 82% Archival Rate, Backlog From 2019, and an Inspection Calling Productivity 'Frankly Concerning'

The Conselho Superior do Ministério Público has put a proposal on the table that, until last week, almost nobody outside the prosecution service expected to see in writing: extinguish the specialised domestic-violence section of the DIAP do Porto, the unit set up at the end of 2019 to centralise the most sensitive criminal files in Portugal's second-largest judicial district. The proposal, first reported by Renascença on 25 April, lands on the desk of the new prosecutor-general just as Parliament is debating yet another package of accelerated procedures for domestic-violence cases.

What the Inspection Found

The trigger is an inspection report dated 17 March 2026 that covers the section's work between 2022 and 2024. Inspectors describe the workflow as "morosa, fluida e protelada" — slow, drifting and protracted. The single most striking number is the archival rate at the Matosinhos arm of the section: 82% of files ended up shelved "for lack of evidence or other reasons". The inspectors call the productivity record "frankly concerning at all levels, indicating weak performance by magistrates and weak efficiency from the services".

The section has carried a structural backlog since its creation. When it absorbed cases from the territorial DIAPs in late 2019 it inherited a tranche of files that, the report says, were transferred without proper triage. Subsequent inflows compounded the gap. The centralisation of resources, the inspectors conclude, "did not bring gains in establishment" — a polite way of saying the section never got the magistrates and clerks the model required.

The Proposal: Dissolve or Reinforce

The Conselho Superior's preferred option is dissolution: send the cases back to the territorial DIAPs (Porto, Matosinhos, Vila Nova de Gaia and the smaller comarcas) and rely on liaison magistrates to keep specialisation alive. The fallback option, if dissolution is rejected at the political level, is to reinforce: more magistrates, more clerks, better facilities, and a formal liaison network across departments.

Either path is a public admission that the 2019 specialisation experiment did not work. The promise at the time was that concentrating files would produce specialist prosecutors who saw enough domestic-violence patterns to recognise lethality risk early. The inspection finds that the volume overwhelmed the staffing and the specialist edge dulled.

The Bar Association Wants the Opposite

Hours before the Renascença story broke, the new president of the Ordem dos Advogados went the other way. Speaking to Observador on 24 April, the Bastonário argued for specialised courts for domestic-violence victims — not just specialised prosecutorial sections — calling it "absurd" that family-court and criminal-court decisions on the same household can pull in opposite directions, sometimes leaving children with the very parent already accused of violence. The political tension is now explicit: the prosecution service wants to deconcentrate specialisation, while the lawyers want to push it deeper into the bench.

The Government Response

The Council of Ministers approved a package on 24 April aimed at speeding up criminal cases and strengthening the protection of domestic-violence victims. Among the measures: judge-recusal incidents will no longer paralyse a process; deadlines for exceptionally complex cases get adjusted; specific rules cover acts performed outside the deadline; and the inquiry, accusation, instruction and contestation phases are reorganised. The package is on its way to Parliament for ratification.

The political question now is whether the package is enough to fix the productivity problem the inspection has surfaced, or whether the structural call — keep the Porto section alive with reinforcements, or dissolve it and rebuild — needs to be made first. With more than 35,000 domestic-violence files moving through the Portuguese courts in 2025 and a 90-day rule for indictment routinely missed, the answer carries weight beyond the second judicial district.

For broader context, see getting a NIF as a new arrival in Portugal.