Police force faces new challenges

Today the Indonesian police force is celebrating its 49th anniversary. Satjipto Rahardjo looks at the present challenges facing the force.

SEMARANG (JP): The Indonesian police force, or POLRI, came into being amid the fight for independence. Today, half a century later, the Indonesian police have to confront a much different situation and many new challenges.

In 1946, the police force and their countrymen fought hand in hand against the colonial power. Today they are facing the challenge of how to perform their duties professionally.

It is not easy to transform the culture of policing in a colonial administration into the policing of an independent Indonesia. I still see traces of colonial policing today.

Police who have to question the legitimacy of people talking in public is but that kind of colonial trait.

The police are not highly esteemed in our society. I think people still consider the administration of peace and order in a society as something that can be taken for granted, not a serious undertaking. It is not uncommon for people to avoid having to do with the police as much as possible. Doing business with the police is considered unpleasant and is likely to create more of a problem than a solution.

Of course that kind of situation is detrimental to the business of the police, who have to work closely with the people. Without the understanding and support of the people, police can not perform well. We are talking about image building, which means that the police force has to be able to cast itself in such a way that people will trust them.

Back to the question of keeping peace and order, it is now becoming more evident that this cannot be taken for granted. We do not have to wait until it is not safe to walk on the streets to appreciate the importance of police tasks.

A society wanting to live in peace and order has to pay for it. The people should be willing to pay their police to have the quality of order they want. A glimpse of how nations spend their money on police is shown in Table 1.

The table compares the basic monthly salary of a new police recruit to the top cop, and to a bank clerk. The figures dramatize the problem of how much society is willing to pay those who engaged in dangerous jobs and those who are doing ordinary office work.

TABLE 1 (in US$)

Country Recruit Chief Clerk

INDONESIA 63 930 233 MALAYSIA 156 1,465 597 SINGAPORE 513 9,682 510 THAILAND 147 1,703 253 HONG KONG 1,323 16,901 724 PHILIPPINES 36 471 275

(Source: Asiaweek, April 20, 1994)

Another comparison shows the shortage of police personnel in Indonesia. The common international standard for people per police is about one in four hundred. The figures of people per police officer are shown in Table 2.

TABLE 2

Indonesia 1 : 1,100 Thailand 1 : 228 Malaysia 1 : 249 Philippines 1 : 665 Singapore 1 : 295 Hong Kong 1 : 220

The above figures show how the Indonesian police force has to work harder than its colleagues in neighboring countries.

Everywhere in the world the police are a paramilitary force. While the police in Indonesia belong to ABRI (the Armed Forces), they are not a combatant. In Act 20/1982 on defense and order, the police are given the autonomy of an agency of the criminal justice system, by which its main job is to keep order and to enforce the law. This is a rather complex situation, and so I always like to characterize the police, especially in Indonesia, as "a civilian in uniform". It is important to distinguish the difference in doctrines between a military and police nature, as the one is to destroy while the other is to protect and to care.

The police force has to accommodate any changes happening in society that make the police officer's life more complicated. The emergence of environmental problems puts weight on them to develop new skills (such as forensic tactics). But as far as I know there are still no special branches here like the environmental police forces in some other countries.

Mastery of modern technology and coping with political development are two important issues confronting our police force at the moment. As Indonesia moves towards a civil society, in which the rights of the people gain more importance, policing will undoubtedly get more complicated.

The writer is a sociology of law professor at Diponegoro University, Semarang, and a member of the National Commission on Human Rights.