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rison breaks and drug smuggling into prisons continue despite reform plans announced by the Law and Human Rights Ministry.

Prisoner Anwar bin Kiman, who was sentenced to life imprisonment for raping and killing a 12-year-old girl, escaped from Salemba Penitentiary, recently.

He deceived prison guards by wearing a hijab and carrying a child, allegedly taken in by his wife during a visit. As a result, he was able to walk out of the prison unnoticed, director general of correctional institutions at the ministry, I Wayan K. Dusak, told The Jakarta Post over the phone on Tuesday.

The prison guards in charge of inspecting visitors on the day of incident — on the second day of Idul Fitri celebrations — were unable to crosscheck visitors since they entered and exited the prison using two different doors, handled by different guards.

“The guards wouldn’t notice whether one person was coming or leaving because different doors were being used,” he said, acknowledging that the authorities were negligent that day.

He also said the prisoner was able to escape because guards were not checking people leaving the prison, further evidence of a weak penitentiary security system.

Minister Yasonna Laoly said prison breaks and drug smuggling would continue to occur as long as there was an inadequate number of prison guards assigned to each penitentiary.

“There were only 50 guards on duty monitoring more than 5,000 visitors,” he told reporters after the teleconference event with other ministry authorities from different regions in Jakarta. Salemba Penitentiary accommodates 4,000 inmates at present.

Indonesia has 192,000 prisoners with only 14,000 prison guards.

Prison breaks are not just occurring in the capital. Five prisoners escaped through the ceiling of Cebongan Penitentiary in Yogyakarta last month. In West Java, the lack of a prison security system was proven by several drug smuggling attempts.

On July 2, prison guards discovered that 2 kilograms of marijuana had been thrown over prison walls in Bekasi. Another attempt also occurred on July 6 when a visitor tried to carry 10 packages of methamphetamine into the prison located in Bogor, West Java Law and Human Rights Agency head Susy
Susilawati said.

“Luckily all of the attempts failed,” she said.

In Medan, North Sumatra, prisoner numbers have increased from 22,000 people to 24,000 in just two months. The rising number of prisoners has resulted in overcapacity, which increases the risk of prisoners escaping.

The ministry has obtained this year Rp 2 trillion of allocated spending in the revised 2016 state budget, which is to be distributed to all regions, mainly for the renovation and development of new prisons to accommodate the huge number of inmates.

Wayan said the ministry would allocate the funds for areas with high crime rates and prison overcapacity such as in Medan, North Sumatra and Nusakambangan prison island in Cilacap regency, Central Java.

Nusakambangan’s capacity will be optimized through the development of two or three new spaces to accommodate 1,000 new prisoners, he said. (win)