For the majority of people in Indonesia, street hustlers, known as preman, are an integral part of their lives. 

From directing traffic to looking for parking spots, these preman, derived from the Dutch word vrijeman, are all eager to lend a hand, in exchange for petty cash or loose change in your glove compartment. 

However, apart from these harmless types, there are other preman whose roles in society, especially in the business and political world, are more substantial. 

These types of hard men, usually grouped under an organisasi kemasyarakatan (ormas, community group) are dispatched to incidents such as land disputes, foot soldiers whose only function is to evict the losing side in a legal case.

It is a well-known fact that as Indonesia has grown in stature as a vibrant democracy, these gangsters also offer their services in rounding up people to join political party rallies or issue-specific street protests.

In a country where law enforcement continues to be in flux and law enforcement personnel themselves at times engage in criminality, these hoodlums and gangsters can also be found in the protection-racketeering business.

And in a place where the borders between politics and business are always shifting it is a possibility that the gang leaders masquerade as politicians and/or businessmen.

Some of members of the Cilegon chapter of the Indonesian Chamber of Commerce (KADIN) may claim themselves to be a card-carrying member of the organization but they might as well have been gangsters dressed as businessmen when they were caught on camera asking a petrochemical company to award them Rp 5 trillion (US307 million) worth of projects in the area.

The Cilegon incident is similar to what happened in Subang, West Java, where Chinese electric vehicle giant BYD reportedly faced up against a group of thugs trying to disrupt construction of its Rp 11.7 trillion plant.

These extortion scandals are shocking, especially because they involve such huge sums of money, but they were not the first and certainly will not be the last, especially given how deeply rooted the problems of gangsterism are in society.

From a historical point of view, in Indonesia hoodlums and gangsters have long been part of society’s fabric.

Throughout Indonesia’s pre-colonial history, outlaws and bandits were a feature of the social landscape especially in Java, with the legendary founder of the Singasari kingdom Ken Arok being a prime example of bandit-turned royal.

So influential is the role of the gangster in the country’s history that celebrated author Pramoedya Ananta Toer once quipped that one of the reasons Soekarno and Hatta declared the country’s independence on Aug. 17, 1945 was due to the pressure from the notorious Pasar Senen gangs.

The longstanding practice of accommodating hoodlums and gangsters has continued in what historian Robert Cribb describes as a situation where rulers and authorities "have opted to overcome the problem of gangsterism not by suppression but by incorporation."

There was an episode when the New Order regime in the early 1980s decided to crack down on gangsters by launching a campaign of mysterious killings of preman, but for those familiar with the episode the consensus was that the gang members targeted in the extrajudicial killings were those that military intelligence had dispatched to mobilize voters to support the ruling Golkar Party.

Such mysterious killings should not be among the options to deal with the problem of gangsterism, but incorporating hoodlums into the economic and political system should never be an option.

Tough and persistent law enforcement should be the only way to deal with the problem of rampant gangland crime.

Earlier this week, the National Police arrested 17 members of gangster-linked group GRIB and demolished the group's command center set up on government land in Banten.

We need to see more of that.