Police organisation
Polícia Judiciária
Portugal’s criminal-investigation police, to which Law 49/2008 reserves the most serious offences.
At a glance
- Official name
- Polícia Judiciária (PJ)
- System
- Portugal
- Level of government
- National
- Kind of body
- Criminal investigation agency
- Status
- Currently operating
- Official website
- https://www.policiajudiciaria.pt/ — confirmed against the organisation’s own pages on 19 September 2026.
- Facts last checked against sources
- 13 September 2026
What it is
The Polícia Judiciária is one of the three general-competence criminal-police bodies, and article 7(2) of Law 49/2008 reserves the most serious crimes to it. Reservation is the structural point: Portugal does not leave the allocation of grave cases among its police bodies to practice or negotiation but fixes it in the statute that organises criminal investigation.
What it covers
National, with the offences reserved to it by article 7(2) of Law 49/2008.
Broad responsibilities
- Criminal investigation as a body of general competence
- Investigation of the offences the statute reserves to it
Elsewhere on this site
- Who polices what — how Portugal is structured, against other systems
Other organisations to compare
- Polícia de Segurança Pública — Portugal
- Guarda Nacional Republicana — Portugal
Where this connects
Institutions: National police.
Sources
Diário da República (via the Polícia Judiciária official site) · Legislation · 2008-08-27 · link verified 2026-07-26
The Diário da República's consolidated text of the LOIC as at 12 November 2021, hosted on the Polícia Judiciária site. The Law has since been amended by Lei 24/2022 and Lei 2/2023, which this copy does not show. Compared on 10 October 2026 with the Diário da República's consolidated version as at 16 January 2023 (as reproduced on EUR-Lex): Articles 2 and 3 are unchanged, and Article 7(2), amended by Lei 2/2023, still reserves a listed set of crimes to the Polícia Judiciária. Supports Art. 2(1) ("a direcção da investigação cabe à autoridade judiciária competente em cada fase do processo" — direction of the investigation belongs to the competent judicial authority at each stage) and Art. 2(4) (the criminal-police bodies act under the direction and functional dependence of that authority); Art. 3(1) naming the three general-competence criminal-police bodies — the Polícia Judiciária (PJ), the Guarda Nacional Republicana (GNR) and the Polícia de Segurança Pública (PSP); and Art. 7(2) reserving the most serious crimes to the Polícia Judiciária.
Polícia Judiciária (Portugal) · Institutional (self-description) · link verified 2026-09-19
SCOPE: the Polícia Judiciária only. The force’s own mission page, read directly. Supports its stated mission: to "coadjuvar as autoridades judiciárias na investigação criminal que lhe esteja especificamente cometida pela Lei de Organização da Investigação Criminal ou que lhe seja delegada pelas autoridades judiciárias competentes", to develop and promote prevention, detection and criminal-investigation action within its competence, and to carry out official forensic examinations. The page does NOT state which minister the force depends on, and none is claimed from it.