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EDITORIAL: Plight of prisoners
Overcrowding on one hand and understaffing on the other appear to have triggered Indonesia’s largest-ever jailbreak.
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Overcrowding on one hand and understaffing on the other appear to have triggered Indonesia’s largest-ever jailbreak. (Antara/Rony Muharrman)
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aw and Human Rights Minister Yasonna Laoly has taken immediate action after almost 450 prisoners fled Sialang Bungkuk detention center in the Riau capital of Pekanbaru last week. He dismissed the jail warden, Teguh Triahatmanto, and other officials and plans a string of measures to improve prison management all over the country.
Overcrowding on one hand and understaffing on the other appear to have triggered Indonesia’s largest-ever jailbreak. Just for the record, the mass escape of prisoners in Pekanbaru is the seventh case since Yasonna took the helm of the Law and Human Rights Ministry in October 2014, not to mention repeated clashes inside prisons that have caused deaths and injuries.
Sadly, a lack of accommodation for inmates and prison guards beset penitentiaries across the country long before Yasonna was named the law minister, overseeing the directorate general of correctional institutions.
Sialang Bungkuk is perhaps an extreme example of the poor state of Indonesian prisons. The Pekanbaru detention center has to accommodate almost five times its official capacity of 360. To make matters worse, only 30 prison officers were available to keep an eye on about 1,800 incarcerated people.
There are also reports of extortion and illegal levies practiced by rogue prison officials, who took advantage of the prisoners’ fight for space. Following an inspection of the prison, which was not for media coverage, Yasonna said a prisoner admitted to having been forced to pay for drinks and meals, which should have been given to him for free. Other prisoners claimed a prison guard had gathered them in a cramped cell on purpose and told them relocation to a more spacious and comfortable one would come at a price.
Suffice to say that the Pekanbaru prison mirrors the chronic prison crisis the government has been unable to deal with. With most prisons confronting the same problems it will come as no surprise if we hear of more jailbreaks in the next few months or years. Jailbreaks in detention centers or penitentiaries elsewhere in the country are to be expected unless the government does what it takes to cope with the root causes it has ignored for too long.
Yasonna has no qualms about reform of the country’s criminal justice as a solution to the prison quandary. He indeed has played his part in changing retribution as the basis of the country’s penal system into restorative justice, unfortunately in a manner that has hurt the sense of justice itself.
