Beyond Case Closure: Centring Victims’ Psychological Healing in Indonesia’s Restorative Justice Framework through an Islamic Legal Lens

Abstract

This article critically examines the implementation of Restorative Justice (RJ) in Indonesia, focusing on its substantive effectiveness in facilitating the psychological rehabilitation of crime victims. Although RJ has been formally embedded within Indonesia’s national legal architecture—most notably through Supreme Court Regulation (Perma) No. 1 of 2024 and Prosecutor’s Regulation No. 15 of 2020—its practical operation tends to privilege procedural settlement over the holistic healing needs of those who have suffered harm. Employing a normative-empirical legal methodology combining statutory, case-based, and conceptual analysis with selective field interviews in Takalar Regency, the study exposes four intertwined clusters of deficiency: the absence of mandatory pre-mediation psychological screening; the structural marginalisation of mental health professionals throughout the RJ process; the lack of post-agreement monitoring mechanisms; and the corrosive influence of socio-cultural pressures, including victim blaming, community stigma, and opportunistic third-party interference. These deficiencies collectively erode the voluntariness foundational to restorative practice and prevent RJ from fulfilling its normative promise as a victim-centred instrument of substantive justice. Drawing on the Islamic jurisprudential principles of ṣulḥ (reconciliation), ʿafw (forgiveness), and ḥifẓ al-nafs (preservation of human life and dignity), the article constructs a distinctive theoretical scaffold that repositions psychological recovery—rather than case resolution—as the primary index of RJ success. Policy recommendations include the revision of the LPSK Law to broaden access to psychological rehabilitation, the mandatory integration of clinical psychologists at every procedural stage, the establishment of dedicated Crime Victim Recovery Centres, and the prohibition of uniformed law enforcement officers from serving as RJ facilitators.