Retributive and Restorative Approaches to Drug Offending in Indonesia

• In Event: Challenging Criminological Universality: Perspectives on Alternative Forms of Justice in the Global South

Abstract

Over recent decades, Indonesia has pursued a punitive, criminal justice-focused response to the illicit drug trade, in the context of a ‘war on drugs’ across Southeast Asia. As well as retaining the death penalty for drug trafficking, lengthy prison sentences are imposed for a range of drug-related offences, including low-level offences of drug use and possession. Among the many problems arising from this punitive approach is a significant prison overcrowding crisis. One of the solutions which is being championed as an alternative to imprisonment in (some) drug use cases is a restorative justice approach focused on rehabilitation. Over 40,000 individuals went through recognised rehabilitation treatment processes during 2021. However, this approach is implemented in a highly fragmented manner through numerous institutions, and has led to reports of forced treatment, corruption and extortion, and arbitrariness in the diversion process. Drawing on interviews with prisoners serving sentences for drug offences in a prison in Jakarta, and with Indonesian civil society organisations working on drug policy issues, this paper will examine the implementation of the restorative justice model while embedded within a retributive drug policy regime. It will also consider the extent to which this model may risk reproducing the socioeconomic disparities that have characterised the country’s criminal justice approach.

Author

• Daniel Cullen, University of Oxford