Odemira and Guarda Prisons No Longer Take Women, So Tires and Santa Cruz do Bispo Are the Mainland's Only Women's Jails

The prisons of Odemira, in the Alentejo, and Guarda, in the central interior, no longer hold women. Women who must be jailed in the south are now taken to the Estabelecimento Prisional de Tires (Tires Prison), in Cascais, and those from the central interior to the Estabelecimento Prisional de Santa Cruz do Bispo Feminino (Santa Cruz do Bispo Women's Prison), in Matosinhos. The Direção-Geral da Administração da Justiça (Directorate-General for the Administration of Justice) set this out in a statement on the night of Tuesday 13 October, Lusa reported.

The move itself happened two weeks earlier. According to CNN Portugal, the last women left both prisons on Tuesday 29 September, in an operation that went ahead without incident.

Why the prisons are changing

The Direção-Geral de Reinserção e Serviços Prisionais (DGRSP, the prison and probation service) told Lusa that turning Odemira, and one section of Guarda, from women's to men's accommodation "is part of a plan to reorganise services". Guarda was already mostly male; the section was its only permanent women's wing.

CNN Portugal reported that the aim is to relieve the most overcrowded prisons, chiefly the Estabelecimento Prisional de Lisboa (Lisbon Prison), which is due to close in phases by 2028. Men are to move into the emptied spaces in a second phase planned for October. Lusa has reported that building work in 11 prisons is meant to open more than 1,000 places for men transferred out of Lisbon, and Rádio Altitude reported that a former youth detention centre near Guarda is being adapted to take prisoners.

Not every woman will travel the full distance. The DGRSP said women in transit or attending court in the south will be held in a section of Olhão prison, and that Guarda will keep a women's dormitory for the same purpose in its region.

What it means for women and their families

Lusa puts the drive from Odemira to Tires at about 220 kilometres on the A2, and from Guarda to Santa Cruz do Bispo at about 215 kilometres on the A25. Families who used to visit nearby now face a long return trip. In May, Público described the plan as creating a "female prison desert" in the south.

The DGRSP's own pages show what was lost and what remains. Odemira opened in 1995 to house women from the south, with 56 places and a nursery for prisoners' children. Tires, which takes women from all over the country, lists 633 places and a "Casa das Mães" for pregnant women and mothers with children up to three. Santa Cruz do Bispo Feminino lists 352 places and was built so that women from the north could stay near their families.

Portugal held 13,633 prisoners, 1,016 of them women, CNN Portugal reported on 30 September. On the mainland, Tires and Santa Cruz do Bispo are now the only prisons for women. The DGRSP also lists women's sectors in Angra do Heroísmo and Ponta Delgada in the Azores and in Funchal in Madeira.

The guards' dispute

The change also moves staff. In August the Sindicato Nacional do Corpo da Guarda Prisional (National Prison Guard Union) said it would go to court to stop the compulsory transfer of nine women guards from Odemira to Tires. Its president, Frederico Morais, told Lusa they had been promised they would not be moved against their will. The DGRSP replied that it respects the union's right to complain and would answer through the proper channels.

The reshuffle comes as the prison service faces scrutiny, from the Ombudsman's call for mental health care in prisons to the risk supplement that left guards out. Neither the DGRSP nor the courts' directorate has said publicly how many women were moved.