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Prisons face ongoing over capacity problems in Indonesia
Prisons across Indonesia continue to face overwhelming capacity demands, with 40,000 convicts and detainees needing space in already crowded facilities
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Prisons across Indonesia continue to face overwhelming capacity demands, with 40,000 convicts and detainees needing space in already crowded facilities.
"Over capacity is our main problem, aside from limited facilities and human resources," Justice and Human Rights Ministry's Director General of Penitentiary Untung Sugiyono said at a year-end conference in Jakarta on Wednesday.
Indonesia has around 400 penitentiaries with a total capacity of nearly 90,000, but currently they are required to hold more than 130,000 detainees and convicts.
"Jails are overcrowded by about 40,000 inmates."
Untung said the capacity issue was creating problems in the management of prisons, particularly in terms of supervising inmates.
"Over capacity has led to an increase in security disturbances, decreasing quality of services for inmates, a spike in disease among detainees, drug dealing and deaths inside prisons," he said.
Untung said the ministry had planned to build new facilities and enlarge the capacity of current prisons.
"We aimed to build 32 new facilities this year (2008) but were only able to construct seven. That led to an increase in capacity by about 2,300," he said.
He said the failure to build the facilities was due to the ministry's tight money policy and delay of the revision of the directorate general's allocated budget.
Untung said the ministry had tried to overcome the problem by granting some detainees conditional releases after they had served two-thirds of their sentences.
"This year, we granted conditional releases to almost 17,000 inmates," he said.
This policy freed up Rp 42 billion (US$3.77 million) from the ministry's budget allocated for inmates' meals and health services.
Untung also said 750 inmates died during their prison terms in 2008.
"Most of them died from HIV/AIDS infections and tuberculosis contracted before they entered the facility," he said.
He said their conditions generally worsened during their time in prison.
"I guess most of them were depressed because of the change of environment."
