Indonesia’s Prison Overcrowding Crisis: Criminal Code Delay a Chance to Fix it?

After a wave of protests from students, civil society activists and prominent community figures, the national legislature (DPR) and the government finally agreed to postpone passing a controversial new criminal code (KUHP) to replace the current code, inherited from the Dutch.

The draft code had prompted widespread criticism in Indonesia and abroad for intruding too far into the private lives of citizens and for introducing unnecessary offences that discriminated against minorities and women, and threatened freedom of expression. There was concern that if the draft KUHP were passed, it would have worsened Indonesia’s chronic prison overcrowding crisis.

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