The Attorney General Asks Subordinates To Usepologies When Demanding Crime Perpetrators

Attorney General ST Burhanuddin appealed to all his staff to always try to achieve substantive justice or to fulfill a sense of justice in society in carrying out law enforcement tasks.

According to Burhanuddin, this can be realized by the ability to explore legal values in society, considering that prosecutors are not rigid, standard, and frozen laws.

"The prosecutor must use conscience in every decision-making process in the law enforcement process. Because conscience is not in the book, use social sensitivity, brothers and sisters," said Burhanuddin, quoted by ANTARA, Sunday, February 26.

The Attorney General believes that the formalistic justice approach that examines the rules is rigid in order to pursue legal certainty cannot be maintained anymore.

The paradigm change makes the prosecutor's work not only to exercise the state's authority to delegate a case to the court, but also to balance the applicable rules (rechtmagheid) and interpretations that rely on the purpose or principle of benefit (doelmatigheid) in the criminal justice process.

Furthermore, the adaptation of the substantive justice paradigm is outlined through the Regulation of the Indonesian Prosecutor's Office Number 15 of 2020 concerning Termination of Prosecution Based on Restorative Justice.

This was later strengthened through Law Number 11/2021 concerning the Indonesian Prosecutor's Office, in which Article 30C letters b and c regulate the prosecutor's office to participate and be active in handling criminal cases involving witnesses and victims as well as the process of rehabilitation, restitution, and compensation.

Therefore, the Attorney General emphasized that the prosecutor's authority in carrying out prosecution discretion must be carried out taking into account the laws that live and develop in society, local wisdom, and moral values, ethics, and justice in society.

This is because it has an important meaning in order to accommodate the development of legal needs and a sense of justice in society, and to demand changes in the mindset, behavior, and legal certainty received by the community.

The same thing applies when the public prosecutor is in a position to appeal or not to a verdict.

They are faced with the obligation to consider the dynamics of law and justice that have developed in society so far and to use certain strict standards and conditions.

The public's great attention and response to cases involving Ferdy Sambo, for example, must be studied to what extent the reactions were disappointed or satisfied with the trial verdict representing substantive justice.

Then the same accuracy also needs to be maintained in the considerations of the application of restorative justice, considering that the response and reaction of the community at large and massive can also be influenced by various information on various media platforms.

Therefore, the Attorney General emphasized that based on the principle of dominus litis or controlling cases from upstream to downstream, a prosecutor must be able to adapt to the legal needs of the community, accommodate the interests of the community, and be a solution to various legal problems in society.

"So that the modern prosecutors in the future will not only be as humanist prosecutors in terms of law enforcement, but can be part of the answers or solutions to legal problems in society," said Burhanuddin.