Filmed Slapping a Prisoner, a Guard Faced No Case Because Time Ran Out, the Ombudsman's Prison Inspectors Report

A prison guard was caught on camera slapping an inmate at Vale de Judeus. The prison's lawyer watched the footage, and in August 2024 wrote to the service that disciplines guards to say so. That service never assigned an investigator or even a case number. In July 2025 it closed the matter because the time limit for disciplinary action had run out.

The case is one of several set out in the 2025 report of the Mecanismo Nacional de Prevenção (National Preventive Mechanism, MNP), the anti-torture inspectorate run by the Provedora de Justiça (Ombudsman). The report was delivered to parliament on 23 September alongside the Ombudsman's annual activity report. Its prison chapter is sharply critical of the Serviço de Auditoria e Inspeção (Audit and Inspection Service, SAI), the internal unit of the prison service, the DGRSP, that can open and run disciplinary cases against staff.

Evidence requested too late, witnesses not heard

The MNP made six prison visits in 2025, to Vale de Judeus (twice), Viseu, Funchal, Faro and Olhão, and two units for people found not criminally responsible. On each visit it now reads a sample of the maltreatment files handled by the SAI over the previous 24 months. At Vale de Judeus, which holds more than 500 prisoners, it found:

• A case closed for lack of proof the SAI caused. A prisoner phoned the Inspeção-Geral dos Serviços de Justiça (Justice Inspectorate) to say a guard had pulled him out of his cell and beaten him in the corridor, in front of the cameras. A prisoner in the cell opposite backed his account. The inquiry was closed for lack of evidence, although there was no footage only because the SAI asked for it after the deadline to keep it, and the one witness named by the complainant was never heard.
• The slap that ran out of time. The disciplinary case described above. The SAI blamed the ten months it took for the footage to reach it, but the MNP points out that footage is not needed to open a case, and there was already enough to start one.
• A crime not reported to prosecutors. A guard hit a prisoner on the back of the neck to force him into his cell, and CCTV recorded it. He received a written reprimand, suspended for ten months. The SAI itself said in writing that the facts amounted, in the abstract, to a crime, but it did not report them to the Ministério Público (Public Prosecutor's Office).
• Two years before anyone asked for the tape. A prisoner reported in June 2022 that two guards had assaulted him and asked for the footage to be kept. His medical record lists bruises to the head, grazes and swelling. The SAI answered the inspectorate's request for an update only in July 2023, and asked the prison for the recordings in May 2024.

The MNP also found inquiries into the use of force whose closure the SAI approved "without any reservations", even though the prisoner had not been taken to the clinic afterwards as the rules require.

A prisoner attacked for two days in Faro

The most serious case comes from Faro. On 27 November 2023 a newly admitted prisoner was beaten in the showers by other inmates and left with visible bruises on his head. He was beaten again in his dormitory that day and, the next day, attacked physically and sexually in the same dormitory. CCTV shows guards speaking to him while the bruises were already visible, with nothing checked or reported. It also shows the dormitory door left open for more than 20 minutes while attackers who did not live there walked in.

The SAI opened its inquiry into the guards' failure to help more than four months later. Most guards told it they "saw nothing". That inquiry has been suspended until a criminal case, opened after the prison's own lawyer reported the facts to prosecutors on 5 December 2023, is finally decided. The disciplinary case against the attackers had no proposed decision almost two years on. When the MNP asked what had been done afterwards to remind guards of their duty to intervene, it was told the subject had not been raised, collectively or individually.

Suspended for years, still on duty

At Vale de Judeus and Faro, the MNP found disciplinary cases against staff for alleged maltreatment suspended until the related criminal cases end, even where CCTV footage gave strong evidence. Suspension is an option, not a legal duty, the report notes, citing a 2020 Supreme Court ruling. It warns that cases frozen for years, with the staff involved kept in post, feed "an undesirable perception of impunity" and the risk that the conduct is repeated. It records that prisoners described an "environment of impunity" to its inspectors.

The SAI's own explanation, given in a meeting with the inspector-coordinator of its Centre, South and Islands delegations, was a shortage of staff, high turnover and poor pay. The MNP says the number of files it has read so far does not yet support system-wide conclusions, and it will extend the review through 2026.

The report ties much of the problem to thin legal teams. Viseu, with three lawyers, handled cases thoroughly and reported regularly to prosecutors. Vale de Judeus had one lawyer for more than 500 prisoners. In Funchal, prison guards were still being appointed to investigate their colleagues' use of force ten months after a lawyer joined the prison.

Funchal's women's wing: "a real hole"

The MNP recommends closing the women's wing of Funchal prison outright. It was built as an admissions area for short stays and has no dining room, so women eat in their cells. There are no shower rooms, only a single shower at the end of a draughty corridor, where women queue wrapped in towels. The report describes mould, damp, strong smells, cockroaches and little natural light, and quotes prisoners and staff calling it "a real hole" and "a disgrace". It suggests moving the women back to the prison's former K wing.

The visits took place against rising numbers. The prison population grew by 774 in 2025, to 12,981, against an official capacity of 12,608, which puts occupancy at 103 percent. On figures the DGRSP gave the MNP in April 2026, 33 of the country's 49 prisons were over capacity, led by Viana do Castelo at 169 percent and Braga at 163.7 percent. Portugal's overcrowding is already under supervision in Strasbourg, where the Council of Europe set September 2027 as the deadline for tangible progress.

What the MNP recommends

• More lawyers for prison legal teams, "with particular urgency" at Vale de Judeus.
• More guards on the surveillance teams at Vale de Judeus, Faro and Olhão, so fights between prisoners are stopped in time.
• Closing Funchal's women's wing and finding the women a dignified alternative.

Vale de Judeus, where most of the SAI cases come from, was already under strain: six months of guards' strikes left prisoners locked in for 22 hours a day. The Ombudsman's main annual report, delivered the same day, found that residence permits drew almost a third of all complaints in 2025.

Source: Provedor de Justiça, Mecanismo Nacional de Prevenção, Relatório à Assembleia da República 2025 (chapter 2, prison system), delivered to parliament on 23 September 2026 and published on provedor-jus.pt.