Questions/Answers

In a world with complex and multidimensional phenomena such as isolation, extreme poverty, discrimination, social exclusion, family violence and delinquency, which threaten the rights, freedoms and fundamental guarantees of victims of domestic violence and physical abuse such as children, women, the elderly, disabled persons, immigrants or the lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and intersex population, the Guarda Nacional Republicana (GNR), as a Security Force that operates in 94% of the national territory, needed to improve interaction with citizens, fostering human, neighbourly and trustworthy relationships. The GNR has consolidated a project to support specific victims based on an approach that includes preventive strategies, consubstantiated in special community and proximity patrolling programs and in collaborative and cooperative partnerships with local, national and international entities, and in intervention strategies, capable of ensuring support to specific victims through information, guidance, monitoring, protection, interaction with the support and referral network; the investigation of crimes committed against especially vulnerable victims and collaboration with judicial authorities in monitoring critical cases through an ongoing risk assessment and attribution of victim status. This approach, with the aim of eradicating violence, implies acting on three levels: a) the primary level, to raise society's awareness of the issue; b) the secondary level, which includes immediate responses to occurrences to limit the consequences of violence; and c) the tertiary level, which supports direct and indirect victims and prevents the recidivism among perpetrators. The project aims to involve the society as a whole in order to jointly identify intervention priorities and find solutions to real and concrete problems that attack the human integrity of especially vulnerable citizens, enhancing the feeling of security and quality of life for all.

With this project, together and with the collaboration of local, national and international partners, the GNR empowers its military personnel with tools to support especially vulnerable victims such as children, women, the elderly, disabled persons, immigrants or the lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and intersex population to exercise their democratic rights, safeguarded by the Portuguese Republic Constitution and enshrined in the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights, ensuring access to close social, judicial and psychological support structures, whilst raising awareness and training society on the effects of discrimination, on account of psychological anomaly or social, economic, family or educational vulnerability.

Within the context of the 2030 Agenda - the sustainable development goals, this project consolidates: Goal 1 and 10 - contribute to the implementation of inclusion and social protection equality measures for all, promoting inclusive treatment, regardless of age, gender, disability, ethnicity, religion and/or socioeconomic status. Goals 4 and 5 - promote equality in obtaining knowledge on human rights, gender equality, a culture of peace and non-violence among the school community and raise awareness of the vitality of eradicating discriminatory behaviours and conducts against women and girls, both in the public and private spheres; Goal 16 and 17 - seek to reduce all forms of violence by holding accountable the GNR, as an element in the democratic rule of law’s action that also empowers other states to act, through bilateral and multilateral cooperation which includes specific and general training and joint patrolling actions; Goal 18 - supports victims who join the shelter house protection program, and who are deprived of the exercise of their labour rights on behalf of their safety, not without having ensured their employability conditions without being precariously.

The GNR is aware that effective and efficient structuring enables reducing financial burdens and increases productivity in a long-term sustainability perspective. This project allows the GNR to become a central element in the structuring of various prevention and intervention dimensions, based on the three aforementioned levels - primary, secondary and tertiary - as well as the fields of police, criminal procedure and psychosocial action, and with the various local, national and international partners.

The GNR, which is responsible for 94% of the territory, is the visible face of the democratic rule of law and sometimes the only representative of rights, freedoms and guarantees close to specific victims. Thus, the project is operationalised in three convergent fields: a) The police field, which contemplates analysis and study of the phenomenon and its causes; the flagging of concrete cases; the identification and monitoring of situations; specialized and personalized assistance to specific victims (and to perpetrators, when applicable) and the promotion of adequate and possible protection actions to specific victims; b) The criminal procedure field, which establishes the participation of the GNR as the criminal police body responsible for reporting crimes; carrying out all the necessary and urgent precautionary acts to ensure the means of proof; drawing up the inquiry procedures; assisting the judicial authorities in investigations; proposing adequate victim protection measures, giving sustainability to the criminal procedure amendments. c) The psychosocial field, wherein the victims (in some cases the perpetrators) are referred to the support network organisation for each individual case; it monitors the cases in an integrated manner, and proactively participates in preventive studies and processes of the phenomenon.

The GNR has become a national reference that demystifies social stereotypes and prejudices, fed by cultural customs and traditions, and that raises awareness of the Portuguese Nation on this issue, whilst it reveals itself to be an element of empowerment of society - therefore of the citizen - in preventing and reporting violent behaviours and conducts and, in particular, of hope and encouragement to victims of specific violence, enabling them to exercise their constitutional right and psychosocially and judicially supporting them.

The support to specific victims is general and equitable for the whole society as the GNR centre of gravity, although it dedicates particular relevance to children, women, the elderly, disabled persons, immigrants or the lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and intersex population, who are victims of domestic violence and physical abuse in Portugal. The number of domestic violence incidents reported in Portugal has steadily increased since the implementation of this project and is at least five times higher than the number of cases being tried in recent years. The number of persons convicted for domestic violence is two times less than the number of cases that are brought to trial and the number of convictions for aggravated murder has remained relatively constant in recent years. From the crimes against persons provided for in the Penal Code, the number of criminal proceedings regarding domestic violence, attempted murder and sexual abuse of children/minors has been increasing in contrast to the number of cases of other crimes against persons, whose evolution has dropped in the same period.

In alignment with the ministerial indications defined in the II National Plan against Domestic Violence, implemented on 21 January 2003 with the initial designation of Women and Minor Nucleus (NMUME), this project aimed to investigate crimes committed against especially vulnerable victims, namely women and children, and to promote support and other investigation actions. It included three implementation phases: phase I (October 2004 to May 2005) to create 23 NMUME bodies, one in each territorial group, ensuring personalised attention to victims; phase II (2005-2008) which integrated a military element of the investigation and inquiry teams, which was the basic unit of the GNR criminal investigation structure; and phase III (2009 to 2011) in which the target audience was extended to victims such as the elderly, disabled persons, ethnic minorities and lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and intersex populations and the inclusion of crimes of physical abuse. This phase included an evaluation. Simultaneously, the rigorously recruited and selected military personnel was duly qualified with specific training, namely with a NMUME specialisation course. In 2011, the GNR was a counsellor on CEPOL’s domestic violence syllabus. Consequently, the NMUME project was renamed Specific Victim Investigation and Support (IAVE) and the NMUME training course was renamed the IAVE Course. Recently, the Course on Criminal Prevention, Community Policing and Human Rights was consolidated, particularly focused on preventive pillar training. Doctrinally, the domestic violence policing manual and the risk assessment manual were created. This project has been nationally consolidated by extending its action to: a) the preventive component, materialised through special community and proximity patrolling programs, targeted at supporting specific victims and establishing partnerships; b) the strategic planning, management and communication component; and c) the international training component.

As in any change management process, it is important to interconnect all stakeholders around the core objective, creating synergies and commitment to ongoing and interdependent change. In general, no obstacles constraining the development of the project were pointed out, although the national context only allowed for an adequate and proportional allocation of the country’s human and financial resources to the purposes proposed by the project.

The implementation and consolidation of this project has been developed in a sustainable manner. It includes a comprehensive approach that interconnects different action levels, fields and strategies; that respects the national reality to gradually ensure social acceptance and the application of inclusive and equality measures, regardless of the social, economic, political and religious status and that involves society in the need to reduce all forms of violence while nationally and internationally holding accountable the GNR, as an element in the democratic rule of law’s action.

From the point of view of international cooperation, the dissemination and sharing of this project, whether in discussion forums or training courses, based on consolidated experience, with learned and validated knowledge, enables to enhance the police service rendered to the citizen and adapted to each local reality and culture.

Yes, in so far as it enabled the development of specific institutional projects in the area of human rights with intervention in the field of prevention in school communities, reception centres for the elderly, religious communities and other vulnerable populations. An example of this good practice is the creation of the course on criminal prevention, proximity policing and human rights.

answered in the previous

The resources allocated to the support of specific victims are mainly human resources that carry out duties in the criminal and operational investigation structure of the special programs and in the communication and public relations and strategic planning and international affairs structures. Currently, the GNR exclusively allocates: • 360 military personnel to special programs, made up of 81 special program sections (SPE), which organically depend on the Territorial Detachments and receive technical guidance from the special program bureau. There is also 1 (one) officer responsible for the special programs per district (18) and 1 (one) Head of the SPEs (81), who currently rank officers or sergeants; and • 100 military personnel in the criminal investigation structure, consisting of 18 Intelligence and Criminal Investigation Sections, whereby the operational component has 24 NIAVE.

Initially, a diagnosis was made of the human and financial resource needs for the continuation of the NMUME, which was revised by changing the IAVE designation and extended to the preventive component. An attempt has been made to adjust the human resources to the particular needs of each command, taking as criteria the criminal indices committed in each district. On the other hand, the selection, recruitment and training process takes into account the needs reported by the hierarchical structure to the appropriate strategic planning management body.

Yes

This project has been the subject of various academic analyses, namely, licentiate and master’s theses, internal assessments and international recognition. The EUCPN acknowledges NMUME and IAVE as good practice. The dissertations are carried out by students who use the scientific investigation methodology. In 2012, the internal assessment aimed to evaluate the satisfaction level of NIAVE performance: 893 victims were interviewed; 369 entities were questioned and 807 military personnel were targeted. Currently, the project “qualifying security with collective intelligence” is underway, in partnership with the Atlantic Grids consulting firm. In the first stage, the internal assessment was carried out with the contributions of 400 military personnel; in the second stage, the assessment of approximately 300 stakeholders took place; the third stage will project this analogy to the national context of European Gendarmeries.

The project “qualifying security with collective intelligence”, in partnership with the Atlantic Grids consulting firm, resorted to the application of the collective intelligence methodology to prediction, prevention, deterrence and repression of the criminal phenomenon of domestic violence.

The results are currently being evaluated by applying the methodology and integrating the adjustments and modifications into the identified underlying processes, which are then reassessed.

One of the institutional purposes is to consolidate the GNR as a reference of excellence in the field of human security, focusing on persons, including its military personnel and citizens. In 2015, taking into account ministerial strategies and plans, the “2020 GNR Strategy: A Strategy for the Future” was drawn up, foreshadowing guidelines – “Present and Neighbourly Security Force: to strengthen citizens’ trust in the Institution” - and strategic objectives – “to foster and enhance greater interaction between GNR personnel and citizens, boosting the special prevention and policing programmes, local partnerships and the use of information networks and technologies” and “to strengthen community and proximity patrolling, focused on the protection of citizens in general and especially vulnerable persons in particular” - to align collective and collaborative efforts, from the local to the national level of command and between the various and different valences, and which is based on the sustainability between policies and political strategic tools and tactical and operational management ones. The GNR has managed to reach an agreement between the strategic component and the tactical or operational basis, based on a preventive and intervention approach to risk conducts and behaviours that grossly neglect the value and integrity of human life.

Several public bodies with competence in the area of domestic violence and in accordance with the abovementioned areas of intervention are involved in this project: at the level of establishing public policies in the case of the Commission for Citizenship and Gender Equality; at the level of studying the phenomenon in the National Observatory of Violence and Gender of the Faculty of Social and Human Sciences; at the level of internal planning and administration, the General Secretariat of the Ministry of Internal Administration, and the media sector throughout the country. The following entities are also relevant at a national level: the Retrospective Analysis Team of Homicides in Domestic Violence; the Portuguese Association for Victim Support; Commission for the Protection of Crime Victims; the Women’s Association Against Violence; ILGA Portugal Association - Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Intervention; and the Immigrant Victim Support or Racial or Ethnic Discrimination Unit.

One of the main lessons learned is reflected in the development of human, neighbourly and trustworthy relations, drawing the GNR closer to the citizen, and is reflected in the joint efforts to enhance the society’s feeling of security and quality of life. This project has been improved at three levels: a) strategic planning and management with the recent institutional creation of the Commission for Gender Equality and Non-Discrimination; b) strategic communication, which resorts to information and communication technologies, such as social networks, to disseminate prevention campaigns against violence exerted upon especially vulnerable persons and which conducts national campaigns - highlighting: one which was carried out with 150 municipalities, which called for reporting domestic violence cases through the exhibition of outdoors and urban furniture for information with the “Do not let them make a punch bag out of you. Blow the whistle” and the one carried out with Delta Cafés, which promoted the dissemination of traditional Portuguese proverbs printed on sugar sachets to combat domestic violence; and c) at the level of international training, upholding the continuation of the IAVE Course in the IBERPOL network, which is expected to extend to the Community of Portuguese Speaking Countries.