Protecting the Rights of Children in the Indonesian Juvenile Justice System

Abstract

Delinquency rate of children every year always increases, if we look closely at the development of criminal acts committed by children so far, both in terms of quality and modus operandi. The research is an empirical legal research or commonly called as socio-legal research. It was conducted at Mamuju district, West Sulawesi, Indonesia. The results show that the implementation of the children rights’ protection in the process of juvenile criminal justice has been going well, although there are still rights of the children that have not been fully fulfilled. Such as the right to be free from torture, punishment or other cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, not being arrested, detained or imprisoned. The process of juvenile criminal justice is not fully running smoothly, because in practice several obstacles are encountered. These obstacles include: the lack of understanding from law enforcement officials regarding child protection, limited number of juvenile judges or judges specializing in child criminal cases, many courts still do not have a special courtroom for juvenile court trial, the lack of defendant’s knowledge of the rights owned, there is no place to child custody or a Penitentiary for Children, so that child custody must be joined with adult in the sense that child custody with adult prisoners is not separated so that it can adversely affect child custody. Keywords: Children; Criminal Law; Juvenile Justice; Human Rights DOI : 10.7176/JLPG/92-10 Publication date: December 31 st 2019