On Assessment of the Supreme Court Decisions in Tackling Substance Misuse in Indonesia

Abstract

This study aims to analyse the Indonesian Supreme Court (Mahkamah Agung) decisions to the defendants of substance misuse. The data were based on the Supreme Court decisions for substance misuse cases from 2001-2009, uploaded in putusan.mahkamahagung.or.id. The database consists of 191 cases involving 218 defendants. Logistic regression and Tobin’s logistic regression (Tobit) were used in this study to estimate the probability and the intensity of various disposals. This is inline with Becker (1968) argument that the optimal deterrence effect of a disposal arose from the probability of conviction and the intensity of punishment. The types of punishment sentenced to defendants of substance misuse cases are vary, ranging from imprisonment, fines, community service, probation and even a capital punishment. The results from logistic regression analyses showed the social costs of substance misuse was used by the Supreme Court judges to consider the value of fines sentenced to offenders. the social cost that is inflicted by the defendant was only weighed in giving fines to the defendant. On the other hand, the results from Tobit regressions showed that the Supreme Court judges did not taken into consideration the social cost of substance misuse in determining the intensity of punishment sentenced to defendants. The explicit social cost caused by the defendants of the narcotics/psychotropics case was Rp 23.7 billion (about US$ 2.37 million), however the fines charged by the Supreme Court was only Rp 5.5 billion (about US$ 550,000). Further investigation showed that the defendants who were sentenced to pay fines by the District Courts has 51.7% more probability to be sentenced with imprisonment by the Supreme Court. On the other hand, results from Tobit regressions showed that the longer the imprisonment sentenced by the District Court, the more fines were sentenced to the defendants by the Supreme Court.