Community Service Sentencing as an Alternative to Short-Term Imprisonment Under Indonesia’s National Criminal Code
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Abstract
Community service constitutes a principal punishment under Indonesia’s National Criminal Code and, within the statutory conditions of Article 85, offers an alternative to short custodial sentences or specified fines. This article examines the legal criteria for imposing community service and the institutional conditions for its implementation. Using normative legal research with statutory and conceptual approaches, it distinguishes the applicable legal framework from proposals that still require institutional agreements or technical standards. Since Law Number 1 of 2023 entered into force on 2 January 2026, the analysis treats community service as part of the operative sentencing framework rather than an indefinitely prospective policy. Eligibility requires both an offense punishable by imprisonment of less than five years and a judicial decision that would otherwise impose no more than six months’ imprisonment or a fine up to category II. The defendant’s informed agreement, ability to work, safety, social circumstances and other statutory considerations shape judicial discretion. The punishment ranges from eight to 240 hours, may not be commercialized, and is subject to prosecutor supervision and guidance by community corrections officers. The article proposes a coordinated implementation and evaluation model while acknowledging that it has not empirically measured readiness, prison-population changes or recidivism outcomes.
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