Controlling Environmental Harm: Assessing Criminal Law Enforcement on Haze Pollution Using Content Analysis of Court Decisions in Indonesia

抄録

Haze pollution is a persistent, devastating and harmful problem in Indonesia and the Southeast Asian Region. Although a substantial body of research has discussed haze pollution, relatively few studies have focused on the issue of law enforcement, especially in the judicial system. This paper investigates the influence of the gravity of haze pollution as environmental harm on judicial sanctioning decisions in the case of land/forest fires. We adopt a novel approach to analyze judicial sanctioning decisions on criminal offenders based on different types of defendant occupations and burning site locations. Using a qualitative approach based on content analysis, we observe that the actual gravity of the environmental harm does not consistently affect the pattern of judicial sentencing decisions. More specifically, the gravity of the judicial sanction imposed on the plantation company and its director and manager is less consistent with the goal of internalizing the harm caused by the offense. In contrast, in the case of the estate employee, laborer and farmer/landowner, the judicial sanction is relatively consistent with the gravity of the environmental harm. Overall, judicial sanctioning decisions that are insensitive to the degree of the environmental harm that should be internalized underlie the persistent and devastating haze problem in Indonesia.