Borobudur Law and Society Journal

Plea bargaining is promoted as a remedy for slow, costly and congested criminal courts, and Indonesia now has its own version: Law No 20 of 2025 on Criminal Procedure, in force since 2 January 2026, introduces the admission of guilt (pengakuan bersalah) through three routes. This normative study asks what efficiency this mechanism can deliver, what it costs in due process, and whether it suits corruption cases. It combines statutory, conceptual and comparative approaches, drawing on the new Code, the former Code, the Corruption Law, international fair-trial standards, United States authority, and Indonesian scholarship and early reports on the new provisions. The analysis shows that the mechanism is closer to a judge-supervised summary procedure than to American plea bargaining, yet it still contains a written agreement on the sentence to be requested, and it brings the familiar risks of prosecutorial dominance, pressure to plead, unequal access to restitution and weak transparency. The efficiency claim is plausible but unproven in Indonesia, because no data on time, cost or caseload have been published. Corruption is not excluded by offence type, only by penalty ceiling, which makes prosecutorial guidelines, disclosure of agreements, judicial scrutiny of the factual basis and monitoring necessary. Efficiency is a legitimate aim only as an instrument subordinate to due process.