Reformulating the Legal Framework of Restorative Justice in Indonesia's Criminal Justice System
Abstract
Law enforcement within the criminal justice system tends to be offender-oriented, placing excessive emphasis on the rights of suspects and defendants. Crime victims, despite suffering the most direct harm from criminal acts, are afforded inadequate protection under this approach. Victims are neither granted formal authority nor actively involved in the investigation and trial processes, resulting in a diminished capacity to pursue their rights and seek redress for the harm suffered. A proposed solution lies in adopting a victim-oriented approach to criminal case resolution through restorative justice, which emphasizes the restoration of fairness and balance for both victims and offenders. However, the implementation of restorative justice in Indonesia remains inconsistent, with notable disparities in regulation and policy across the Police at the investigation stage, the Prosecutor's Office at the prosecution stage, and the Supreme Court at the adjudication stage. This study examines the reformulation of restorative justice regulation within Indonesia's criminal justice system. It employs a normative legal research method using statutory and conceptual approaches, with deductive syllogism applied as the analytical method to draw conclusions from general legal principles to specific legal issues.