Inquisitorial Model of Juridical Inequality / Modelo Inquisitorial de Desigualdade Jurídica: Recognizing the Persistence of the Colonial Inquisition Regime in Justice Procedure and Police Practice

International coverage of the anticorruption task forces launched in Brazil in 2005 and 2014 exposed the world to some of the Brazil’s ordinary and unique procedures for crime prosecution and the peculiar forms of collaboration between judges, public prosecutors, and civil/judicial police. The anticorruption indictments focused on the launch of investigations in 2005 into the so-called Mensalão scandal, consisting of monthly payoffs made to lawmakers, supposedly engineered by President Lula’s government to keep right-wing lawmakers from blocking his legislative agenda. This chapter focuses on these dominant judicial procedures and policing practices in contemporary Brazil—namely, the inquisitorial judicial and policing regime. The justice procedures and policing practices of the Inquisition, or inquisitorial models of rule, are rising up to overthrow liberal legal-juridical traditions globally and especially in places like the United States.