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Indonesia THE CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM
The nation's criminal jurisprudence and its
institutions of
criminal justice derive from Indonesia's experience as an
independent state, from the European tradition, and from
the
Dutch colonial period. The criminal law is one of three
systems
of law in operation in the nation since the nineteenth
century,
the other two being a system of European-derived
commercial codes
and a civil law based on customary law (adat),
which
included Islamic law
(sharia, in Indonesian
syaria--see Glossary;
see
Islam
, ch. 2). The criminal law is the only
one of
these three systems that was essentially codified and
applied
uniformly throughout the national territory. Criminal
justice was
administered through a system that included a hierarchy of
trial
and appellate courts, a prosecutory arm of the national
government, and an independent bar.
Several factors limited the actual use of these formal
legal
channels in dealing with activity defined as criminal.
Owing in
large part to a general shortage of trained legal
personnel, the
infrastructure of the criminal justice system was more
extensive
in urban locales and on Java than in rural or remote
areas. In
any case, its procedures often did not apply to military,
security, and intelligence organizations, which in
practice
sometimes dealt with both political and ordinary crime.
Moreover,
Indonesians did not always resort to the formal legal
system to
resolve their conflicts because many did not share Western
views
regarding the nature of individual rights and the efficacy
of law
and procedural justice, but rather preferred to settle
disputes
by arbitration or accommodation. Retribution and revenge,
however, were still popular ways of settling disputes in
the
early 1990s, especially away from the big cities and
towns.
In rural areas, many conflicts, including some (mostly
minor)
criminal cases, continued to be settled by village chiefs.
Even
in towns and cities, complaints were not often filed with
authorities, and cases were frequently settled out of
court in
order to save time and money or to avoid attracting public
or
official attention. In criminal cases, such settlements
typically
entailed accommodation between the accused and the police
or
prosecutors, whose roles in the criminal justice system
were
generally more critical than those of courts or judges.
Wealth
and status were apt to be important factors in the
outcome.
Data as of November 1992
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