Restorative Justice for Victims from the Constitutional Perspective in Indonesia

Abstract

Restorative justice in Indonesia emphasizes the active participation of victims, offenders, and the community in resolving criminal cases, with the primary aim of restoring losses and ensuring the offender’s accountability. Various efforts have been made to integrate this approach into the legal system through a number of regulations, such as the Juvenile Criminal Justice System Law (UU SPPA) and other related provisions. However, in practice, the role of the victim is often overlooked, as the legal approach tends to focus more on the offender. This situation reflects that, despite a paradigm shift from a retributive model of law enforcement to a restorative approach, its implementation in practice still does not fully address the needs and rights of victims. This research aims to explore the essence of restorative justice in protecting victims of crime. In addition, it evaluates the implementation of criminal case resolution based on restorative justice from a constitutional perspective. The research method used in this dissertation is normative legal research, which is generally conducted through literature studies and the analysis of secondary data. The findings of this study show that restorative justice places the victim as the primary harmed party and provides space for their active participation in case resolution. This approach seeks to restore the victim's losses by holding the offender accountable and aims to return the victim to an equal position with the offender within the legal process. Furthermore, the implementation of restorative justice in Indonesian legislation already has a clear legal foundation. However, there are still several shortcomings. Therefore, it is important to revise the Indonesian Code of Criminal Procedure (KUHAP) to better integrate the resolution of criminal cases based on restorative justice.

Keywords: Restorative justice, Indonesian criminal law, victim

DOI: 10.7176/JLPG/149-02

Publication date: July 28^th 2025