Optimising Restorative Justice for Children: Non-Litigation: Cases of Child Offenders in Indonesia and Malaysia

DOI

10.2991/978-2-38476-519-5_52How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Restorative Justice; Juvenile Justice System; Diversion; Non-Litigation; Indonesia; Malaysia

Abstract

Restorative justice is an important paradigm in the juvenile criminal justice system because it emphasises recovery, participation, and prevention of revictimisation through non-litigation mechanisms such as diversion. This study aims to analyse the regulation and implementation of restorative justice for juvenile offenders in Indonesia and Malaysia, as well as to formulate strategies for optimisation based on a comparative approach. The method used is a comparative legal analysis of legislation (the SPPA Law and the Child Act 2001), implementation policies, and empirical data from national and international institutions. The results of the study show that Indonesia has a firm legal basis through the SPPA Law and PERMA No. 4 of 2014, but its implementation is still constrained by the normative limitations of Article 7, the limited capacity of officials, and the lack of support services. Malaysia, despite adopting rehabilitative principles in the Child Act 2001. There are no explicit provisions regarding diversion, so its application depends on the discretion of officials and administrative policies. Both countries need to strengthen technical regulations, improve institutional capacity, and educate the public to strengthen social acceptance of non-litigation resolutions. This research recommends the development of a hybrid model that combines the legal certainty of the formal system with the flexibility of the restorative approach, and encourages the juvenile criminal justice system (SPPA) to structurally incorporate restorative justice mechanisms into every stage of the trial, including cases with high criminal penalties, in order to realise fair, participatory and sustainable child protection.

Copyright

© 2025 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  - Indrawan Indrawan
AU  - Adi Sulistiyono
AU  - Subekti Subekti
PY  - 2025
DA  - 2025/12/29
TI  - Optimising Restorative Justice for Children: Non-Litigation: Cases of Child Offenders in Indonesia and Malaysia
BT  - Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Law, Economics & good Governance (ICLAW 2025)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 658
EP  - 668
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-2-38476-519-5_52
DO  - 10.2991/978-2-38476-519-5_52
ID  - Indrawan2025
ER  -