Legislator bemoans appalling conditions in country's prisons

Wahyoe Boediwardhana, The Jakarta Post, Denpasar

A senior legislator revealed on Monday that 80 percent of the penitentiaries in the country, including those in Bali, were currently way over capacity.

"Most are between 40 percent and 300 percent over capacity. In one prison, with a capacity of 300 people, it is filled with 800 inmates," said Akil Mochtar during his working visit to Bali.

During the visit, Akil and 13 other legislators from the House of Representatives (DPR) went to Kerobokan Penitentiary in Denpasar.

The legislators from Commission III on security, legal and human rights affairs earlier visited others nationwide, including in East Java, Jakarta, North Sumatra, Palembang, Batam, Riau and East Kalimantan. Of all the penitentiaries, those with the worst conditions were in Jakarta, East Java, Riau and Batam, he said.

The overcrowded conditions had created extra problems for the prison management and the government, said Akil. As the number of inmates far outnumbered capacity, the government had to spend much more money on food for all the inmates, Akil argued.

According to the legislator, in the past six months, the government had not paid its debts of over Rp 80 billion to the private companies that supply meals for the hundreds of penitentiaries nationwide.

"If the private companies stop supplying food to the penitentiaries as the government fails to pay its debts, it would then create another problem," explained Akil.

He said that actually, the funds to cover the meal expenses for the inmates had been allocated by the government in the state budget, but it was not clear why the money had not been disbursed yet.

Akil urged the central government to add more money to the budget allocation for prison management so that in the future, the inmates could be treated with dignity. Some of the money could also be used to build more prisons across the country, suggested Akil.

The overcrowded conditions have been blamed for the escape of many inmates in recent years. The situation was discussed nationwide after 52 convicts escaped by sawing through the bars of their cells in a detention center in Batam, Riau province in September two years ago. Some have been recaptured, but many are still at large.

A similar case was reported a year later when 31 adult inmates, who were being kept temporarily at a juvenile detention center in Medan, escaped, raising public concern over poor security and overcrowding in prisons. Three of them, however, were reportedly recaptured a few hours after the escape.