Crime e alienação no Portugal de finais do século XIX e inícios do século XX

From eight hundred, crime and mental illness become a matter of concern for Portuguese society and, in particular, for authorities with responsibilities in these matters. While, on the one hand, responses to the crime materialize, which include the implementation of a new prison concept, which includes the punitive and regenerative aspects, the construction of penitentiaries and the creation of hospitals for the disabled (Rilhafoles, in Lisbon, and Conde de Ferreira, in Porto), on the other hand, there was still a lack of solution for those who committed crimes, but they were admittedly alienated and therefore unimpeachable. Through analysis of different groups of society and using concrete cases, we intend to reflect on the situation of men and women who, in the early twentieth century, despite the double condition of criminals and alienated, continued to be sent to general hospitals, to the prisons or were handed over to their families in the face of State inefficiency, unable to enforce the legislation which, since the late nineteenth century, had called for the creation of structures to accommodate "alienated criminals."