ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the sphere of urban security, community safety and policing in Portugal, and in particular in the metropolitan areas of Lisbon and Porto. It presents an overview of the developments of security in Portugal and key elements of the Portuguese context of contemporary urban security governance. The chapter analyses the current configuration in terms of three major vectors: public/private; central/local; law enforcement and criminal justice/prevention. The governance of urban security in Portugal is largely dependent on central state and national police forces and its diversification is primarily internal to these police forces. In that sense, 'urban security' is still under the scope of 'public security' or 'national security', in which the national police forces are truly the only entities that have a planned approach to security problems at the local level. Criminal justice, risk management and social justice represent the goals and agendas of the internal pluralisation of public security.
