Deputy Minister for Justice and Human Rights Deny Indrayana said that 43 percent out of 150,000 prisoners in Indonesia were drug suspects.Kupang, E Nusa Tenggara (ANTARA News) - Around 43 percent of inmates sheltered in the penitentiary institutions throughout Indonesia were already proven as drug suspects, Deputy Minister for Justice and Human Rights Deny Indrayana said.
Speaking on the occasion of his working visit to Kupang here early this week, Danny stressed that 43 percent out of 150,000 prisoners in Indonesia were drug suspects.
"It affects the capacity of the prisons," he said.
In addition to drug suspects, others inmates are also perpetrators of criminal acts, thus indicating that crime rates and criminality as well as drug abuses in this country continued rising.
According to him, such legal mechanism still failed to bring about positive impact on rising public awareness to prevent them from doing such unlawful conduct.
Under this condition, he went on to say that excess capacity of the prisons throughout the country also affect the services to be given by jail wardens to the prisoners.
"We are considering to build new prisons in order to set off the efforts to lower the criminal acts in the community," he said.
He further explained that the most precise step to lower overcapacity of the prisons is by lowering criminal acts in the community, because it was seen as the only solution for upstream problems.
Furthermore, building additional number of prisons would not overcome the over capacity issue of the prisons directly, he said, adding that in this context of security system also played an important role that should be taken into account. Its application in the prisons should be continuously evaluated.
Therefore, jail wardens were supposed to be more trained in using weapons for certain circumstances in anticipating and driving away a number of unexpected incidents to happen like a recent attack at Cebongan prison on March 23. (*)
Editor: Heru Purwanto
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