Penal proportionality in environmental legislation of Indonesia

Abstract

The paper is aimed to analyze the penal proportionality in Indonesia’s environmental legislation. Primary data were collected from statutes in Indonesia’s environmental legislation. The result showed that penal proportionality relies on the idea that the severity of criminal sanction needs to be proportionate to both the crime seriousness and culpability of the actor. The more serious the offense, the heavier the punishment. The environmental legislation failed to meet penal proportionality due to its inability to reckon the crime seriousness in determining the scale/weight of criminal sanction. To set penal proportionality, offenses in environmental legislation need to be organized based on their seriousness which requires a corollary of rank-ordering, where less serious offenses do not need to be sentenced with greater severity than the more serious ones. The models of criminalization-based environmental damage meet this principle, hence spacing of criminal sanction among the offenses rank need to be formulated to ensure the application of penal proportionality.

Keywords

• penal proportionality
• crime seriousness
• rank-ordering
• criminal sanctions
• environmental legislation