Beyond Child Protection: Reconstructing Criminal Law Protection Against Child Sexual Exploitation Under Indonesia’s New Penal Code

DOI

10.2991/978-2-38476-626-0_8How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Child Sexual Exploitation; Victim-Centered Justice; Criminal Law Reform

Abstract

Child sexual exploitation has become one of the most serious violations of children's rights, evolving beyond conventional forms into technology-facilitated crimes involving online grooming, coercion, trafficking, and commercial sexual exploitation. Although Indonesia has strengthened its legal framework through Law Number 1 of 2023 concerning the Indonesian Penal Code, Law Number 12 of 2022 on the Crime of Sexual Violence, and the Child Protection Law, the existing criminal law system remains fragmented and has not yet established an integrated framework capable of providing comprehensive protection for child victims. This study aims to reconstruct criminal law protection against child sexual exploitation under Indonesia's New Penal Code by addressing normative inconsistencies, strengthening victim-oriented justice, and harmonizing relevant legal instruments. The research addresses the following question: How should Indonesia's criminal law protection against child sexual exploitation be reconstructed to ensure legal certainty, effective victim protection, and child-centered justice under the New Penal Code? This study employs a normative juridical (doctrinal) research method using statutory, conceptual, comparative, and case approaches. The analysis is based on the theories of legal certainty, legal protection, human rights, and criminal policy. The findings demonstrate that the current regulatory framework suffers from overlapping legal provisions, inconsistent criminalization, fragmented victim protection mechanisms, and limited coordination between punitive sanctions and victim recovery. These deficiencies weaken legal certainty, reduce the effectiveness of criminal law enforcement, and fail to adequately respond to emerging forms of sexual exploitation in the digital era. This study proposes a reconstructed criminal law framework that integrates substantive criminal law reform, victim-centered justice, restorative recovery mechanisms, inter-agency coordination, and harmonization with international child protection standards. The proposed framework contributes a progressive model of criminal law protection that prioritizes the best interests of the child while balancing legal certainty, justice, and effective criminal policy in Indonesia.

Copyright

© 2026 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Lusiana Margareth Tijow
AU  - Panglima Altafsyah Mahardika Handoyo
AU  - Tyfosa Helga Wijaya
AU  - Muhammad Risqy Setiado
AU  - Annisa Nursanty
AU  - Lanang Pandu Satria Langit
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/10/29
TI  - Beyond Child Protection: Reconstructing Criminal Law Protection Against Child Sexual Exploitation Under Indonesia’s New Penal Code
BT  - Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Citizenship Education and Democratic Issues (ICCEDI 2026)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 56
EP  - 70
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-2-38476-626-0_8
DO  - 10.2991/978-2-38476-626-0_8
ID  - Tijow2026
ER  -