This book provides a critical analysis of the "ambition for truth" in criminal proceedings, highlighting how this perspective continues to shape current practices and may, in some cases, contribute to the objectification of defendants and the infringement of human rights. Furthermore, it contends that evidential inquisitorialism, evidentiary positivism, and evidentiary rationalism are distinct epistemologies united by an underlying authoritarian political agenda: the pursuit of truth.

This study examines the reinvention of inquisitorial procedures by modern epistemology and their subsequent integration into Latin American legal systems, where they significantly contribute to widespread incarceration and selective prosecution, reinforcing established racial and class hierarchies. The analysis advocates for procedural frameworks that preserve the presumption of innocence, while highlighting ongoing concerns about the prevalence of inquisitorial practices within contemporary criminal justice. The book references both contemporary and classical scholarship in criminal procedure—including works by James Goldschmidt, Franco Cordero, Franchesco Carnellutti, and Pedro Aragoneses Alonso—as well as critical socio-legal scholars from Brazil such as Aury Lopes Junior and Jacinto Nelson de Miranda Coutinho, along with prominent voices in Latin American criminology (Eugenio Raúl Zaffaroni) and sociology (Roberto Kant de Lima and Michel Misse).

Furthermore, it interrogates the epistemological and ontological dimensions of truth within criminal procedure through the theoretical frameworks of Martin Heidegger, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Paul Ricoeur and many others. The study seeks to develop a concept of truth specifically tailored to criminal procedure, with the objective of constraining punitive authority and safeguarding against judicial practices that may infringe upon human rights.

Salah H. Khaled Jr. is Associate Professor of Criminology, Criminal Law and Procedure at Universidade Federal Do Rio Grande—Furg, Brazil. Khaled is the founder and president of the Brazilian Institute of Cultural Criminology. He is the editor of Brazilian Cultural Criminology: From Periphery to Centre, co-author of Curso de Criminologia Crítica e Cultural Decolonial with Wayne Morrison, and editor of Explorando a Criminologia Cultural and Novas Aventuras em Criminologia Cultural with Jeff Ferrell, Keith Hayward, and Álvaro Oxley da Rocha.