ABSTRACT
The drafting and enforcement of criminal law is the result of a complex interaction between the state, society and individuals. Criminal law is a way of articulating and applying normative ideas about what a community should be like. One of the consequences of the persistent corruption of criminal law enforcement in Indonesia is continuing low levels of competence among many police, prosecutors and judges. The dysfunction of Indonesia’s criminal justice is no recent aberration. In fact, it is the result of long trajectory that Lev traces to the collapse of parliamentary democracy in that late 1950s, but which has antecedents in the ideological debates of nationalist leaders in the years leading to the declaration of independence in 1945. Today, more than two decades since Soeharto resigned, Indonesia’s criminal justice system seems strained close to breaking point. Few who are involved in it can honestly speak well of it.
