Rapes Hit a Decade High, Prisons Overcrowded Again, Cybercrime Climbs — What the 2025 Security Report Actually Says

Portugal's annual stock-take of its own security — the Relatório Anual de Segurança Interna, or RASI 2025 — is the thickest single document released each year by the Ministry of Internal Administration. This year's edition runs to hundreds of pages of tables from the PSP, GNR, Polícia Judiciária, SEF/AIMA, and the prison and customs services. Strip the numbers down to what actually shifted, and five findings stand out.

1. General crime is up, violent crime is down

Reported crime rose 3.1 per cent year-on-year in 2025. Violent and serious crime, tracked as a separate category, fell 1.6 per cent to 14,149 cases — continuing a long-run downward trend that has halved the violent-crime rate since the mid-2000s. The composition, though, is changing. Voluntary homicide is up 10.1 per cent from a very low base (Portugal still sits near the bottom of the EU for intentional killings). Robberies at jewellery stores jumped 26.3 per cent, a pattern police attribute to organised cross-border rings operating through Portugal's southern border and Atlantic ports.

2. Rapes at a decade high

The most sensitive figure in RASI 2025 is the 578 reported rape cases — a 6.4 per cent year-on-year rise and the highest absolute number in a decade. The Ministry frames this partly as a reporting effect: targeted awareness campaigns, specialist APAV-trained police intake units, and higher trust in investigators have pushed disclosure rates up. Victims' rights groups broadly agree that the dark-figure gap is closing, but they also flag that the conviction rate on sexual-violence complaints remains stubbornly low, and that the backlog in specialised criminal courts is lengthening rather than shrinking.

3. Prisons overcrowded for the first time in six years

Prison occupancy hit 103.4 per cent in 2025, the first time since 2019 that the prison estate has exceeded 100 per cent of design capacity. The Directorate-General of Reinsertion and Prison Services (DGRSP) points to longer sentences, tighter parole policies following high-profile cases, and — crucially — the decision to move remand prisoners out of temporary facilities and back into standard units. Lisbon's Linhó, Porto's Paços de Ferreira, and the women's prison at Tires are the most stretched. Justice Minister Rita Alarcão Júdice has promised a new prison-building plan, but no tender has been issued.

4. Cybercrime keeps climbing

Polícia Judiciária investigated 2,826 cybercrimes in 2025, up 13.4 per cent on 2024. The composition tells the real story: computer-assisted fraud dominates the volume, but the fastest-growing sub-category is impersonation and identity-theft crimes tied to Portugal's rapidly digitising public services (Portal das Finanças, SNS 24, Chave Móvel Digital). The PJ's Unidade Nacional de Combate ao Cibercrime e Criminalidade Tecnológica now has more open cases than any other specialised unit, and backlog is the binding constraint.

5. The immigration-crime number everyone will quote

RASI 2025 reports a 251.3 per cent increase in illegal-immigration crimes. That number is politically radioactive and needs careful handling. It reflects, overwhelmingly, process-related offences — unlawful entry, facilitation, and document fraud — as enforcement shifts under the new AIMA framework and SEF's legacy functions are absorbed. It is not a jump in violent crime committed by immigrants; those figures are tracked separately and moved broadly in line with the general trend.

That distinction will matter in the weeks ahead. President Seguro has the revised Nationality Law on his desk. Chega and parts of the governing coalition will seize on the 251 per cent headline as evidence for tighter rules. Civil-society groups and academic criminologists will push back that enforcement volume is not the same as crime volume. RASI, which is a statistical document and not a policy one, will struggle to be heard over the political amplification of a single number.

What it means

Three takeaways for readers who want the signal, not the politics. Portugal remains among the safer EU countries on headline violent crime, but the direction of travel on homicide, rape, and organised property crime deserves attention. The prison system is no longer a manageable problem — it is a binding capacity constraint on criminal-justice policy. And cybercrime has quietly become the frontier where law-enforcement under-capacity is most visible, and where the next wave of reform will have to land.