Overcapacity Prison, Deputy Minister Eddy: Wrongly Blaming Kemenkumham

JAKARTA - Deputy Minister of Law and Human Rights (Wamenkumham) Edward Omar Sharif Hiariej said it would be wrong if there were parties who blamed the Ministry of Law and Human Rights regarding the overcapacity of Correctional Institutions (Lapas) in the country.

"It can be said that the overcapacity cannot be blamed on the Ministry of Law and Human Rights," said Eddy Hiariej in Jakarta, as reported by Antara, Thursday, August 5.

The reason, he continued, is that in the criminal justice system in Indonesia, prisons are places of final disposal. Prisons cannot intervene in the criminal justice system and only accept court decisions.

So, said Eddy Hiariej, when it comes to overcapacity in prisons, it is the prosecutor's office, the police and the courts who must be consulted to address the problem.

"Because when the judge decides the case, he won't want to know whether the prison is full or not," he said.

Finally, when the execution by the public prosecutor falls, inevitably the prisons in the country will accept it because they cannot intervene by the judiciary.

In the current criminal justice system in Indonesia, prisons are also not involved in the adjudication process. Overcoming the excess capacity of occupancy in prisons by adding buildings or creating new prisons is not the best solution. However, the government must build a comprehensive and holistic justice system and refer to the modern criminal law paradigm that is universally applicable.

Excess capacity in prisons is inseparable from the orientation of the criminal law paradigm which is still held by law enforcement officers on retributive justice or retaliation.

In fact, since 1990 there has been a paradigm shift in criminal law which is no longer oriented to retributive justice or retaliation but to corrective, restorative and rehabilitative justice.