Slowly, the official narrative that the influx of foreigners has not affected crime figures in Portugal is changing – because it doesn’t stand up to scrutiny.
There are currently 2,374 foreigners in Portuguese jails. They hail from 86 countries, with the majority (669) being Brazilian.
These details have been released for the first time, in the RASI 2025 (the internal security report, for last year) – and as tabloid Correio da Manhã explains, they show a ‘balance between the foreign population, and the percentage of foreign residents’.
Put another way, foreigners currently make up 17.6% of the nation’s population, and 18.1% of the nation’s prison population.
“By the same score, the largest communities (of resident foreigners) – particularly Brazil and Portuguese-speaking African countries – are among those with the greatest number of prisoners.”
Interpreted from another angle, Brazilians represent 28% of the foreigners in Portugal’s jails – and from the table carried today by CM, it is clear that close to half the number in jail in 2025 were not legal residents (whether they were waiting for papers, or here illegally, is not explained).
Taken ‘globally’ (including Portuguese prisoners), Brazilians only number 5% of the total prison population: 1 in every 20 inmates.
And seen from a ‘continent point of view’, the greatest percentage of foreign prisoners hail from Africa (43.3%), followed by South America (31.7%) and Europe (17.7%).
“There are 19 nationalities with 20 or more prisoners” in national jails – close to half of these are residents already of this country.
According to the RASI report, “crimes against people, followed by crimes against property and drug related are the crimes with greatest weight among condemned prisoners”.
CM concludes that the report has some ‘statistical curiosities’: “There are as many American and Russian prisoners as there are Nepalese – 10 from each country. There are more German prisoners than from Mozambique or Pakistan; the 11 Bulgarian prisoners were all resident in Portugal, and there is just one convicted prisoner from East Timor.”
Looking at the CM table, there are also more French prisoners (38) than British (36). There are also 33 Chinese.
Source: Correio da Manhã
