After a series of jailbreaks across different regions of late, perhaps it is time for the country to start addressing the poor infrastructure of its correctional facilities as well as their lack of human resources, two persistent problems which, once again, are believed to have lead to such escapes.

Between March and June this year alone, at least four incidents occurred resulting in the escape of hundreds of prisoners. Mother nature even sent 76 prisoners a gift in the form of a flood, which damaged a prison wall in Jambi, opening a path for escape.

The most recent jailbreak occurred at Kerobokan prison in Bali over the weekend, with four foreign inmates escaping through a tunnel passing underneath the prison wall.

Indonesia has 522 prisons in total, but many show signs of aging.

“They [aging prisons] were either inherited from the Dutch or built during 1980s,” Sri Puguh Budi Utami, secretary of the penitentiary directorate at the Law and Human Rights Ministry, Tuesday told The Jakarta Post over the phone on Tuesday.

Inadequate prison infrastructure coupled with deficient human resources are behind the frequent prison breaks, she added.

In total, prisons across the country only have the capacity to host 120,000 inmates, while in practice they are used hold 227,000 prisoners.

“Sometimes, after an inmate has stayed in a prison for a long time and spoken with the prison officers, an officer may inadvertently mention ‘weak points’ in the prison [that can be used for escaping],” Sri said.

The Law and Human Rights Ministry has been trying to train prison officers and repair infrastructure, but the budget is insufficient, forcing the ministry to sidestep some prisons in less developed areas as it tries to carefully calculate its priorities.

The Law and Human Rights Ministry allocated Rp 1.3 trillion (US$97 million) to operate penitentiaries in the country, Rp 712 billion of which is used to build new prisons to handle overcapacity.

“We need to carefully assess which places are our priority [for improvement],” Sri said.

Insufficient funds have also plagued Kerobokan penitentiary, which was described by Law and Human Rights Minister Yasonna Laoly as “a problematic one” due to its persistent overcrowding.

The ministry’s plans to relocate some prisoners of Kerobokan to a new penitentiary in Bali were stalled by the expensive cost of procuring land in Bali.

“Where will we get the money from? It is very expensive to find 10 to 15 hectares of land in Bali,” Yasonna told reporters at the State Palace on Tuesday.

The situation even prompted Yasonna to request that President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo hold a Cabinet meeting to find a solution to the overcrowding issue.

In addition to the 76 prisoners who escaped from a prison in Jambi after flooding last Wednesday, another incident at the same prison in March saw four prisoners escape by climbing a wall near a kitchen during an inmate riot.

In Pekanbaru, Riau, 260 inmates fled from a prison in early May, in an audacious escape caught by a surveillance camera. The mass prison-break occurred after inmates staged a rally against the prison’s overcrowding. At the time, the prison, which was designed to hold 361 inmates, housed around 1,800 prisoners.

After inmates have fled the penitentiary, the police are responsible for tracking them down again. However, recapturing prisoners is not an easy task as the police must rely on inadequate prison records.

“The challenge [for recapturing escapees] is that we do not know their hideouts, their locations, or who visited them last,” said National Police spokesman Sr. Comr. Martinus Sitompul who also called for improved information exchanges between the police and the prisons.

From last Wednesday’s Jambi jailbreak, the police have so far caught 18 people, while in Pekanbaru, police have only managed to catch 170 escapees while the rest remain at large. (kuk)

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