Jakarta, IO – The Institute for Criminal Justice Reform (ICJR) recommends eight criminal justice and human rights issues be proposed for the campaign of three pairs of presidential and vice-presidential candidates who will compete in the 2024 election.
The key issues include transparency and accountability of the justice system, police violence and brutality, freedom of expression and opinion, overcriminalization and enforcement of criminal regulations, narcotics policies and overcrowding of prisons, serious human rights violation legacy cases, protection of victims and vulnerable groups and criminal justice.
At the moment, criminal law enforcement, particularly the investigation process, is often politicized and corrupted, due to an unaccountable criminal justice system. To overcome this, the presidential and vice-presidential candidate pairs must first do is to commit themselves to reforming the Criminal Code Procedure (KUHAP).
In their Vision / Mission and proposals, the three candidate pairs have conveyed their commitment to providing law enforcement that is free from politicization and corruption, but fail to talk about how to provide an accountable criminal justice system with independent and tiered judicial supervision. In terms of the justice system’s transparency and accountability, ICJR calls on all candidate pairs to revise Indonesian KUHAP, to ensure multi-level supervision of police investigations by prosecutors and judicial authorities, foster human rights assurance for everyone in the criminal justice process and strengthen the role of advocates.
Another issue ICJR highlighted is police violence and brutality. The Commission for Missing Persons and Victims of Violence (KontraS) revealed that from July 2022 to June 2023, 622 incidents of violence perpetrated by the police were discovered. According to ICJR research in 2023, more than one trillion Rupiah of the state budget was spent on tear gas, which is identical with police brutality. Regrettably, the three candidate pairs have not been able to identify the systemic and structural problem of police brutality. Therefore, ICJR recommends that the candidate pairs strengthen the function of internal police supervision and enforce the law against police who commit acts of violence.
Regarding freedom of expression and opinion, the three candidate pairs normatively guarantee freedom of expression and opinion.
“Guarantee” as jargon carries no commitment to legal reform and thus will not deal this problem effectively, because one of the causes lies in problematic legal policies. Thus, ICJR recommends that the new Government form human rights-based laws and policies and eliminate legal provisions that are not in line with human rights and obstruct democracy.
On the issue of overcriminalization and reorganization of criminal regulations, the Indonesian Government’s current tendency is to respond to all legal problems with the enforcement of criminal law. Consequently, overcriminalization becomes inevitable, and prisons are overcrowded.
The three candidate pairs address this only by proposing efforts to harmonize regulations. However, none of them specifically mentioned the problem of criminal law regulations which result in overcrowding prisons. So, ICJR recommends that the candidate pairs develop safeguard rules and guidelines that the Government must follow, before presenting proposals on criminal policy so that overcriminalization and baseless criminalization can be prevented.
Overcriminalization also occurs in narcotics abuse issues, especially against users. Sixty percent of all criminal cases handled by law enforcement officials are related to drug abuse. Unfortunately, none of the three candidate pairs proposed a western-style “health approach” to dealing with narcotics users. Narcotic issues, unfortunately, still carry a negative connotation. Therefore, a paradigm shift is necessary to eliminate the stigma attached to drug users, to decriminalize users and to provide health access to users, as in advanced countries around the world. The candidate pairs must also consider the use of banned substances for therapy and health purposes when they are elected as Indonesian President and Vice President for the 2024-2029 period.
In terms of serious human rights violation issues, the problem revolves around the cases that ping-pong between the National Commission on Human Rights (Komnas HAM), which conducts the preliminary investigation, and the Attorney General’s Office, which conducts the full investigation. It also revolves around the small number of case resolutions and the acquittal of the majority of suspects. It means that victim protection is being neglected.
Next, the resolution of legacy cases of serious human rights violations relies on the Government’s commitment and the Attorney General’s Office’s determination to conduct full investigations.
In the protection of victims and vulnerable groups, each candidate pair has mentioned their commitment to empowering women and children and preventing violence; however, none has addressed the core of the problem: awareness of law enforcement officers that fulfilling victims’ rights is also part of their work. In practice, fulfilling victims’ rights is still limited, and the funding scheme to guarantee fund availability to fulfil victims’ rights is still insufficient. In the criminal justice system, victims’ rights are not specifically regulated in the Criminal Procedure Code, which is supposed to be the main regulatory legal system for criminal procedures in Indonesia.
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On the other hand, the criminal justice system barely pays attention to gender when discussing women. According to ICJR research in 2021, women’s vulnerability in the criminal justice process is not taken into consideration at all. Even in death penalty cases, women are charged not only based on their crime, but also on the stigma of failing to fulfil their traditional gender role.
In general, the three candidate pairs have not considered the importance of gender roles in criminal law reform in Indonesia. In their proposals, the candidate pairs only explain their commitment to gender equality and to issues considered close to women, for example, protection from violence and providing maternal and child health. Therefore, in the future, the candidate pairs must be committed to situating legal reform on gender justice, ensuring women’s representation in criminal law reform and presenting gender analysis and considerations in every legal instrument created, particularly the revision of the Criminal Procedure Code.