Borobudur Law and Society Journal

Indonesian criminal law increasingly treats rehabilitation and social reintegration as purposes of punishment, as Article 51 of the National Criminal Code shows. The Narcotics Law (Law No 35 of 2009) had already adopted this orientation by requiring medical and social rehabilitation for addicts and victims of abuse. Yet Article 55(2) obliges adult addicts to report themselves or be reported, and Article 134 criminalises intentional failure to do so; since Law No 1 of 2026 the penalty is a fine of up to category II. This article asks whether that sanction is consistent with the rehabilitative purpose of punishment. It is normative legal research using statutory and conceptual approaches, based on primary legal materials and on literature on theories of punishment and the neuroscience of addiction; no empirical data were gathered. Tested against each of the four purposes in Article 51, Article 134 serves none of them convincingly. It treats a person whom the statute elsewhere calls a patient as an offender, may add fear to the stigma that already deters reporting, and presumes a capacity to self-report that addiction may impair, a premise that is debated. Article 128(3), which spares addicts in treatment from prosecution, narrows but does not remove the inconsistency. The article recommends that the legislature repeal Article 134 and encourage reporting through non-penal incentives and guarantees.