W

atching the Metro TV show Mata Najwa on March 2, I saw for the first time how inhumane conditions are in our prisons. There were so many people accommodated in one place. It was very crowded, and many of them were narcotics convicts.

It was indeed very embarrassing, if not totally uncaring!

I asked myself how it could be made more humane. Rather than keep those idle hands '€œmotionless'€ or '€œuseless'€, why not make them productive?

These wayward human beings could be trained specifically by industries in need of extra hands, while being treated as humanely as possible. There must be a way to keep them in such a system, such as having a supervisor who would also drive them from a '€œjail hotel'€ to their respective places of employment.

In this way, individuals in jail could still be useful to society, aside from the fact that we would not allow them to miss out on paying annual taxes.

We could invite industrial tycoons to accommodate these unfortunate souls as much as possible in their industrial institutions, without getting out of the rules and regulations of our prison system.

Our prisons should be used only for dangerous criminals who could threaten the lives of others.

In this way I hope we could assure ourselves that we do care about the humanitarian aspect of our jails.

Moeljono Adikoesoemo
Jakarta