The decree altering the admission requirements for the Police of Public Security (Polícia de Segurança Pública, PSP) training course, signed by the Minister of Internal Administration, Maria Lúcia Amaral, was published in the Official Gazette on October 27 and took immediate effect.
Among the new criteria for applying to the PSP is raising the maximum age to 35, while maintaining the minimum age of 18 and Portuguese nationality. The decree did not include the previously mandatory minimum height for entry into the PSP, which was 1.60 meters for women and 1.65 meters for men.
The national director of the PSP, Luís Carrilho, in an order also published today in the Official Gazette, set the minimum height at 1.60 meters for both men and women.
The order states that the October 27 decree “removed the minimum height requirement from its list, with such a parameter to be established only in the aptitude standards and medical examination table, to be approved by the national director of the PSP.”
The revision of the admission requirements for future agents is linked to the declining number of candidates for the PSP in recent years.
In the 1990s, there were over 16,000 applicants, and by 2012, there were more than 10,000, with current numbers not exceeding 4,000.
In this year’s competition to create a reserve for recruitment to the agent training course, 3,392 young individuals applied.
