Enough with apologies and condolences—the systemic failures that have turned our prisons into hell on earth must be swiftly addressed to prevent more deaths. There is not a single excuse to delay a massive overhaul of our deeply flawed criminal justice system to ensure that the human rights of every citizen facing legal recourse are upheld. 

The main culprit behind the fire in Tangerang is certainly more than just a faulty wire in an old building after years of poor maintenance, as suggested by the authorities within hours of the horrific incident. It is the state’s lack of political will under successive governments to provide the people their most basic rights: the right to life, and the right to live in decent conditions – and this applies even in prisons where criminals do their time.

It is a fact that our prisons have long been overcrowded, currently housing more than twice their total capacity. Yet, the government has done little to address this problem, as if it were a fact of life that could never be changed.

Overcrowding in prisons can be solved. One of the easiest and most critical solutions to this problem is to simply stop sending people to prison who should not be there in the first place. The nation’s war on drugs has clearly gotten so out of hand that drug offenders now account for more than half of inmates in prison.

This must stop, for we now know the grave risks inmates are facing.

Of the 41 prisoners killed at the Tangerang prison on Wednesday, 40 were drug convicts, and of these 40 victims, one was a 22-year-old man whose parents could not afford to pay the highly expensive legal fees before he went on trial.

It is imperative that we stop sending all kinds of drug offenders to jail. Many of them are victims who should be sent to rehabilitation centers, and not to prison -- similar to the treatment of celebrities and high-profile personalities who are caught consuming drugs.

Law and Human Rights Minister Yasonna H. Laoly is fully aware of the problems but has failed to fix them even after entering his second term. Yasonna, a senior member of the ruling Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P), has led the ministry tasked with running and overseeing the penitentiaries across the country since 2014.     

We should no longer delay attempts to reform our prisons.

The deadly blaze at the Tangerang penitentiary has clearly exposed the failures of the system. We demand that President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo take concrete measures to address them by setting up a new team to lead the mission to fix our hellish prison system, which cannot be left to the incumbent officials who have proven to be failures.

Heads must roll for the horrific Tangerang prison inferno. 

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