Crimes and Museums, but no Fiction: Portuguese Judiciary Police Museum’s Projects for the Protection of Cultural Heritage 1996-2022

This article presents three interdisciplinary and community-serving museum projects carried out by the Portuguese Judiciary Police Museum (Museu de Polícia Judiciária – MPJ), two of which are based on original ideas and unprecedented procedures. All three of them are ‘out of the walls’ crime prevention projects for the protection of Portuguese cultural heritage. The first project (starting in 1996) was dedicated to museums, the second (2003) to religious art in places of worship, and the third (2007) to the Portuguese unique and identitary Tile Heritage. The common genesis of the three projects is rooted on the one hand in two competencies of the Portuguese Judiciary Police (Polícia Judiciária, PJ) - crime prevention and crimes linked to cultural heritage – and on the other hand in museum concepts emerged in the last fifty years in museum studies - e. g. Declaration of Santiago do Chile 1972, ICOM Round Table; ‘Siena Charter’ ICOM Italy 2014; new museum definition ICOM Prag 2022. The three interdisciplinary projects – based on important partnerships from different academic areas and society sectors – are described in this article in terms of motives, implemented actions and results, and a final summary evaluation. Notwithstanding the severe financial conditions – all three projects had extremely small or even nonexistent budgets - and many not always surmountable obstacles, all three projects presented measurable positive results, and two of them received important national or international awards and were ‘exported’ to Brazil as models.