Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-v9fdk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-04T19:07:01.540Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

4 - The Justice System Postman

The Indonesian Prosecution Service at Work

from Part I - Continuity and Change in the General Court System

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 August 2019

Melissa Crouch
Affiliation:
University of New South Wales, Sydney
Get access

Summary

The Indonesian criminal justice system finds itself under considerable pressure. Heavy caseloads and backlogs have become a central issue for the Indonesian prosecution service. Pretrial detention and prison sentences lead to overcrowding of prisons. Recent research moreover found that most of the backlog of cases in the Supreme Court are appeals of criminal cases filed by prosecutors. This makes case management highly important given that theoretically, the prosecutor’s discretion has a significant role as a criminal case filter. However, since the 1960s, when Suharto’s regimes started using the public prosecution as its instrument for political stability, public prosecutors perform as administrators rather than as officials exercising discretion with caution and care. By adopting a socio-legal approach, I explain the prosecutors’ way of thinking and their influence on how discretion is exercised. This study investigates the implications of the public prosecutions bureaucratic culture on the managing of criminal caseloads in Indonesia and demonstrates why the public prosecutor misuses the appellate procedures in the hopes of gaining success on the court. This chapter offers important insight into prosecutors as the justice system postman in Indonesia.

Type
Chapter
Information
The Politics of Court Reform
Judicial Change and Legal Culture in Indonesia
, pp. 86 - 106
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2019

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×