Substituting immigration detention centres with ‘open prisons’ in Indonesia: alternatives to detention as the continuum of unfreedom

Abstract

ABSTRACT This paper sets out how Indonesia has shifted away from arbitrary and indefinite immigration detention towards so-called alternatives to detention. This shift has been fuelled by the Australian government’s cuts to funding the International Organization for Migration (IOM), which was responsible for the costs of immigration detention until 2018. Although the abolition of immigration detention in Indonesia has been praised as a success, it would be wrong to say that alternatives to detention are without any carceral purposes. While their conditions are more humane overall than those in detention centres, alternatives to detention also serve containment purposes and perpetuate a ‘continuum of unfreedom’, albeit in more subtle ways. More importantly, the decarceration policies have fostered a new hierarchy of refugee deservingness that discriminates against recently arrived asylum seekers. Establishing alternatives to detention has created additional problems that reach beyond the detention/abolitionist dichotomy. The categorical non-integration into the local community and ongoing restrictions on basic rights show that current alternatives to detention, though better than immigration detention, still leave ample room for improvement in decarceration policies in Indonesia and beyond.