Jakarta: Second Safest City in ASEAN, Yet Plagued by Numerous Criminal Cases – How Can This Be?

JAKARTA - The accolade bestowed upon Jakarta as the second safest city in Southeast Asia (ASEAN) according to the Global Residence Index 2026, proudly highlighted by the DKI Jakarta Provincial Government, has come under scrutiny. Behind these impressive statistics, the reality on the ground reveals that street criminality and thuggery continue to plague the capital’s residents. UI criminology expert Josias Simon believes it is reasonable for the DKI Jakarta Provincial Government to regard the international index results as an achievement. “I’m fine with that, because this isn’t the first time we’ve discussed Jakarta. Besides being the safest city, Jakarta is also a Resilience City and a Global City. But the Global Residence Index includes many other indicators, not just security in terms of criminality,” Josias said when contacted by Kompas.com by telephone on Monday (13/4/2026). The term “security” in global indices often encompasses a very broad range of aspects, known as human security. These include environmental security, health, and even economic security, rather than just urban crime figures alone. This also includes security from threats of death due to warfare, which is considered quite distant from Jakarta’s residents. Given the multitude of factors, such data requires re-evaluation of its validity when discussing urban criminality that occurs daily. “We need to critique what the Governor has stated in relation to the reality we see in the media. Thuggery and crime rates, according to police data, haven’t decreased drastically; there are always increases in the PMJ (Polda Metro Jaya) area. So, we need to critically assess those results,” Josias said. According to him, many small-scale criminal acts to thuggery remain prevalent but are never recorded by the police or the Central Statistics Agency (BPS). “Sometimes or often, victims don’t want to report to the police. Reporting just leads to losses, paying this and that. And there’s also security issues from the perpetrators. That’s what affects reporting rates, so the numbers aren’t recorded,” Josias explained. Instead, the current trend among the public is to viralise incidents through social media. Therefore, there is a difference or gap between data and reality, when data indicates low criminality rates, but social media is rife with such reports everywhere.