Rita Alarcão Júdice argued that the fight against violence can and should be done in schools through the subject of Citizenship, “in a context that is not ideological, but based on values”.
The number of arrested for domestic violence returned to increase and, in an interview with Lusa, the Minister of Justice said that a study will be carried out on recidivism and cold cases and withdrawals will be analyzed.
About 9% two inmates who were in Portuguese prisons in 2025 committed crimes of domestic violence, according to data from the Ministry of Justice: 376 were in preventive detention, 11% more than in the previous year, and 1,184 had already been convicted, which corresponds to an increase of 16% compared to 2024.
“We know that the numbers [de queixas] of domestic violence decreased slightly, but we also know that there was a significant increase in the number of people sentenced and those in preventive custody due to domestic violence”, he pointed out, in an interview with Lusa, Rita Alarcão Júdice.
According to the Annual Internal Security Report (RASI) for 2025, police forces recorded 29,644 reports of domestic violence, which represents 577 fewer reports and a decrease of 1.9% compared to the previous year.
However, It is not known how many of these prisoners are repeat offenders. – have been convicted in the past -, preventing, for example, the adoption of measures to prevent the same person from returning to justice a second time.
The person responsible for the Justice department announced that a study will be carried out on the recidivism rate, highlighting that it is necessary to “understand that the context of domestic violence also generates more aggression”.
“We know that, often, those serving sentences are people who are already known to the system”, added Rita Alarcão Júdice.
Still in relation to the analysis of the context of domestic violence, the Minister of Justice said that the Retrospective Analysis of Homicide in Domestic Violence Team, whose new team was appointed last March, will also study, in addition to deaths that occurred in the context of domestic violence, “cases in which there was domestic violence, but there was archived or there was withdrawal, for some reason”.
The objective of this new analytical perspective is to know at what point the society should have realized that a case of domestic violence was taking place and didn’t realize and what was the reason for this to have happened.
“Where did the alerts fail? Where did the means available to the victim, in particular, not act and should have acted?” asked Rita Alarcão Júdice.
Combating violence in schools
“The review of the citizenship chair that was carried out is also for this purpose. We really want the citizenship chair to be used to talk about rights, freedoms and guarantees, talk about the Constitution, talk about what respect is for the other”, said Rita Alarcão Júdice, regarding the fight against domestic violence and dating violence.
Both dating violence and juvenile crime are, for the person responsible for Justice, “very complex situations”, which “profoundly shock” and which are often promoted by exposure to aggressive digital content, including sexual violence.
And these content “tends to create a normalization of certain standards which are often incorporated into their lives in the wrong way”, he also said, adding that it is essential to talk about the topic and even on social media, “which is where, deep down, there is this narrative and narratives that nowadays also appear of exacerbated machismo”.
