Five ministries and the National Police have signed a memorandum of understanding, which stipulates that underage criminal offenders will no longer be sent to jail, but to social institutions.
“We are going to send child offenders to social institutions because we have seen that if they are sent to jail, they do not [improve]. Instead, they turn out worse,” Justice and Human Rights Minister Patrialis Akbar said in Jakarta on Tuesday.
Under the agreement, any underage criminal offenders arrested by the police would not be legally processed, and would be sent directly to a social institution.
“The Justice and Human Rights Ministry along with the Social Affairs Ministry, the religious affairs minister, the national education minister, the Health Ministry and the police will establish the needed social institutions for underage offenders as soon as possible,” he added.
Patrialis also said there would also be a plan to establish educational facilities for underage offenders who had already been sent to jail.
“We are also going to provide advocacy for children who are involved in criminal activities,” he said.
Social Affairs Minister Salim Segaf Al Jufrie said his ministry had also coordinated with the Save The Children, an international NGO, to raise US$193,700 to further develop the minimum standard of care for childrens’ social institutions.
He added that in 2010, his ministry would also receive an extra US$140,000 from UNICEF for the same purpose.
Child protection activist and chairman of the National Commission for Child Protection (Komnas Anak), Seto Mulyadi, told The Jakarta Post that he considered the signing of the agreement among government institutions as a major breakthrough for child protection.
“At the very least the signing of the MoU shows there is a growing awareness that underage criminal offender issues cannot be solved only through legal channels, but they also deserve to be offered a solution through a psychological facilities,” he said.
Komnas Anak Secretary General Arist Merdeka Sirait noted, however, the Supreme Court should have been included as one of the institutions that had signed on to the agreement.
“In order for the implementation of the MoU to be truly visible would greatly depend on whether the legal instutions, from the police to the courts, are serious to implement it,” he said.
“The final decision on the fate of child offenders will fall into the hands of the judges. Therefore, I believe the Supreme Court should also be involved in agreeing to the MoU, because judges are under the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court,” he added.
Arist also said the government had to provide sufficient infrastructure for the agreement to be effectively implemented.
“As of now, we do not have sufficient infrastructure to handle underage offenders yet. We still haven’t seen a proper childrens prison to be established, we also do not have a special court aiming exclusively to try crimes involving children,” he said.
Seto said that for a start, the children’s social institutions and prisons could adopt the informal home schooling system for the education of troubled child offenders.
Indonesia had ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1990.
The convention calls on signatory countries, including Indonesia, to protect children from abuse, sexual exploitation and child labor among others.
This means the government has an obligation to comply with the convention and regulate it at a national level, Seto said.
