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Activists, experts caution against slapdash reform to tackle prison overcrowding
The growing number of COVID-19 cases in Indonesia has reignited the debate on reducing overcrowding in the country’s prisons, prompting lawmakers to consider overhauling the correctional system
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The growing number of COVID-19 cases in Indonesia has reignited the debate on reducing overcrowding in the country’s prisons, prompting lawmakers to consider overhauling the correctional system.
The government has moved fast to rally the support of the House of Representatives, which agreed to resume deliberating controversial revisions to the Criminal Code (KUHP) and the 1995 Correctional Facilities Law, potentially paving the way to the end of prison overcrowding.
The country’s 524 prisons and detention centers hold 268,919 inmates, including some 60,000 detainees, more than double the maximum capacity of 132,107 inmates, according to February data from the Law and Human Rights Ministry.
The data also shows that the nation’s correctional facilities report an average occupancy of 104 percent.
Chronic overcrowding in the national prison system, combined with poor management and a shortage of wardens, has led to frequent prison riots. The most notorious of these occurred in 2013 at Tanjung Gusta prison in Medan, North Sumatra, and in 2018 at the Kelapa Dua Mobile Brigade headquarters detention center in Depok, West Java. The two deadly incidents prompted the government to reform the prison system, yet overcrowding has persisted.
Law and Human Rights Minister Yasonna Laoly’s latest plan to revisit prison reform is not without controversy.
Yasonna told lawmakers at last Thursday’s teleconference that he would formally request approval from President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo to resume deliberations on the revised KUHP and Correctional Facilities Law that had been carried over from the previous legislative session.
Widespread protests from thousands of students and activists forced Jokowi to delay the deliberations in September 2019. The protesters criticized the deliberations for commencing just weeks before the end of the legislative session, as well as articles that they said would roll back decades of political reform to the New Order era.
The revised KUHP and Correctional Facilities Law would automatically void a 2012 government regulation on the rights of prisoners, which stipulates stringent criteria to determine eligibility for sentence remissions and parole for inmates convicted of extraordinary crimes like corruption, drug crimes and terrorism.
Yasonna told lawmakers that he intended to revise the 2012 regulation to facilitate the conditional release of about 300 graft convicts aged 60 and above as part of the ministry’s COVID-19 prevention measures.
The measure aims to release 30,000 convicts of general crimes who have served at least two-thirds of their jail terms to prevent outbreaks in the country’s overcrowded prisons.
Following objections from antigraft activists who questioned the motives behind the inclusion of corruption convicts, who represented only a tiny proportion of the prison population, Jokowi was quick to clarify on Monday that his administration had never considered corruption convicts under the scheme.
According to the ministry’s February data, Indonesia has 4,891 corruption convicts behind bars, far fewer than the 91,308 people serving sentences for drug trafficking and the 46,794 people serving time for illegal drug use.
It has also been reported that graft convicts enjoy arguably less cramped prison conditions than those convicted of other crimes.
Sukamiskin penitentiary in Bandung, West Java, for example, had 464 inmates in March, including 366 corruption convicts and five detainees, about 100 inmates fewer than its maximum capacity of 560.
While the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) initially said it was open to the idea, it now says it is against the plan to grant early releases to graft convicts.
Anticorruption activists have said that reducing prison overcrowding is not as simple as granting early releases or sentence remissions. A rigorous overhaul of Indonesia’s correctional system and provisions in the KUHP, the Criminal Law Procedures Code (KUHAP) and other related laws was pivotal to developing long-term solutions, they argued. They also said that any amendments or revisions, including to the KUHP, should consider alternatives to imprisonment.
Activists have slammed the House’s apparent haste in resuming deliberation on the KUHP with the pretext of the COVID-19 outbreak.
