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Paper short abstract

In Portuguese Police urban force the concept of 'transparency' can be analytically useful as long as we combine it with the concept of 'visibility'. In this paper I propose to think about problems of policing policy and bureaucratic changes from an ethnographic perspective.

Paper long abstract

This paper aims to study particular aspects of the engineering of Portuguese police force policy and adaptable bureaucratic changes to it.

Although opacity is underlined in police studies, I believe that the focus should rather be put on visibility and the ways this policy gains form beyond the so called process of making the police more transparent. I will show how the Portuguese police force produce visibility in two strategic ways: on street level policing and in criminal statistics. I conclude that both processes, especially the "statistics-making" policy, can serve its opposite purpose, underlining professional opacity instead of the so intended transparency of the police force.

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