Jakarta Globe, June 24, 2013.
President
Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has called on law enforcers to make a distinction
between drug users and drug dealers, saying the former should, where possible,
be rehabilitated rather than jailed.
Speaking on
Monday to mark the International Day Against Drug Abuse and Illicit
Trafficking, which falls tomorrow, Yudhoyono said the current law enforcement
approach to tackling drug offenses was ineffective because it criminalized
users who should be treated as victims.
“Members of
our young generation, who have become victims [of drug use], are losing their
past and their present,” he said at the State Palace. “Don’t let them lose
their future as well. We must give them guidance. The solution [for drug users]
is not jail, but rehabilitation. The concept shouldn’t be one of punishment,
but of salvation.”
The
president said the problem with the police’s current blanket approach of
jailing all drug offenders, no matter the severity of their crime, was that
there was always the danger that the exposure to hardened criminals and the
nefarious influences of prison life could have a negative impact on the
offenders and lead them into more serious drugs and crime.
On the
other hand, he went on, with the proper guidance provided through
rehabilitation, they could kick their drug habits and return to a clean way of
life.
“I call on
all Indonesians, including government officials, to take the same view and
understanding of this issue,” he said.
The deputy
justice minister previously said that more than 40 percent of the around
150,000 people in Indonesian prisons were there for drug offenses.
The
National Narcotics Agency (BNN) has confirmed that jails are “overflowing” with
drug offenders, the vast majority of them recreational users or addicts, and
that a “misguided” law enforcement approach is to blame.
Comr. Gen.
Anang Iskandar, the head of the BNN, said on Monday that the 2009
Anti-Narcotics Law contained a decriminalization article that recommended
rehabilitation rather than jail for users, but that the prevailing law
enforcement paradigm was to go tough on all drug offenders.
“Ordering
rehabilitation for users is more appropriate, because being incarcerated
doesn’t serve much of a deterrent effect for them,” he said.
He also
said that poor public awareness of the law was a stumbling block, noting that
it prescribed immunity from prosecution for drug users who turned themselves in
voluntarily for rehabilitation.
“If they
come forward with the intention of seeking medical treatment, then they won’t
have to face any criminal charges,” Anang said.
Critics of
the current approach to jailing all drug offenders point out that drug
circulation is extremely high in the country’s notoriously lax prisons, and
that inmates can more easily get access to drugs on the inside than outside.
Henry
Yosodiningrat, the chairman of the National Anti-Drug Movement (Granat), said
it was no secret that “drug dealing is rampant in 99.9 percent of prisons
across the country.”
He said
that with such a pervasive problem, there was no chance that drug offenders
could ever kick their habits with a stint behind bars, and that if anything,
jail time could exacerbate their drug use.
“I’ve asked
the Justice Ministry repeatedly for an explanation for why there’s such a big
problem with drug circulation in prisons,” Henry said on Sunday. “The wardens
need to wake up to this problem if they don’t want their reputation to continue
being tarnished.”
Sr. Comr.
Sumirat Dwiyanto, a spokesman for the BNN, said there were an estimated four
million drug users in Indonesia, of whom only around 18,000 had spent some time
in a rehabilitation program.
He said
that besides low awareness among both law enforcement officials and users about
the option of rehabilitation, a key reason for the small number of people
seeking treatment was the limited number of rehabilitation centers in the
country.
He also
said the number of drug users was growing daily, amid easier access to
narcotics, much of them increasingly made inside the country.
In
February, the BNN and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime released a
report that said drug use in the country had reached “emergency proportions,”
fueled in large part by the prevalence of amphetamine-type stimulants as the
drug of choice.
The report
estimated that about 60 percent of these drugs, notably methamphetamine, were
produced domestically.
 |
| Indonesian officials with the National Narcotics Agency (BNN) test methamphetamine during a press conference in Jakarta on Feb. 7, 2013. (AFP Photo/ Adek B |
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