Guard busted for selling drugs in prison

Damar Harsanto, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

A guard at Cipinang Penitentiary in East Jakarta was seized red- handed, while conducting a drug transaction with an inmate in the high-security prison building, an official revealed on Saturday.

The suspect, Muara Simatupang, was arrested on Friday afternoon at 5 p.m. while selling drugs to an inmate, named Gunung Sihombing, who is serving a four-and-a-half-year sentence for a drug case.

Penitentiary security chief Agus Sumanto admitted that it was not the first case.

"A number of security guards have been caught in the last couple of years due to drug-related crimes," Agus told The Jakarta Post.

Drug dealing in the penitentiary has been prevalent for some time, but the problem remains unsolved. The guards' low salary and the opportunity to engage in a lucrative but illegal business, coupled with the powerful drug syndicates in the prison are factors which make it difficult to control. Last year, it was reported that drug transactions in the prison amounted to Rp 20 million (US$2,000) per day.

Police confiscated four small packages of putaw (low grade heroin) from Muara. Muara, who was responsible for security in the first block of the penitentiary, had been monitored for two months for allegedly selling drugs prison inmates.

Muara was a former civil servant at the now-defunct ministry of information who was transferred to Cipinang Penitentiary to help the security officers.

Muara is now being held at the East Jakarta Police precinct after having been transferred from the Jatinegara Police subprecinct's detention cell, a police officer said.

"Police are continuing their investigation into drug trafficking in the penitentiary," said the officer at the East Jakarta Police precinct.

Cipinang Penitentiary has around 2,300 inmates at present, exceeding its intended capacity of only 1,700, with only 300 guards who work in four shifts around the clock.