Judicial practices in brazil: How do inquisitorial institutions apply adversarial norms?

The central issue of this work is to understand how adversarial principles are (or are not) applied by institutions that operate under an inquisitorial logic. To this end, it was developed a flow survey, in which we followed 825 custody hearings, held between 2015 and 2016. We also followed their criminal processing up to the outcomes, totaling a sample of 426 sentences examined. As result, We found that the decision of pre-trial detention in a custody hearing increased the chance of conviction. Therefore, when all the cases are constituted by an arrest in flagrante delicto, the conviction reiterates the previous court decision, rendered at the beginning of the processing flow and without any debate on the merits of the case. In addition, it was found that police work is decisive for these results. Beyond it, it was found that judicial actors (especially judges and prosecutors) actively contribute to this result, acting inquisitoriality from the beginning of the flow. Thus, although the new accusatorial rules aim to democratize criminal justice, the institutions and actors remain the same, which contributes to a non-democratic justice practice.