Jakarta – Over a million Indonesians will lose their jobs in the global economic downturn and many will head to the capital, Jakarta, swelling the city's already overcrowded shanty towns with potential to provoke a crime wave, experts told Adnkronos International (AKI).

"Crime has already been rising since the economy has worsened, and the outlook is not bright," security expert Aleksius Jemadu told AKI. Jemadu heads the political science faculty at Indonesia's Pelita Harapan University.

The Indonesian business association has forecast that almost 1.5 million people will lose their jobs in the next five months as the global recession dampens demand for Indonesian exports. For many of these people, unemployment will mean acute poverty.

Almost 45 percent of Indonesia's 240 million inhabitants live on one or two dollars a day. Of the country's 110 million workers, 70 percent do not have a regular job, according to official statistics.

Crime has already risen by 12 percent this month in some areas of Jakarta, according to the city's police. The most common offences are armed robberies carried out by gangs on the street and car thefts.

The link between poverty and criminality is hard to deny, but neighbourhood crime bosses ('preman') and incompetent policing are also fuelling the crime surge, according to Beni Sukardis, director of Indonesia's Institute for Defence Studies (LESPERSSI).

"The culture of the preman is dominant and it is tolerated," he said. "Moreover, the public and politicians should put pressure on the police to make sure they do their job," he added.

"They currently carry out operations on an ad hoc basis, forgetting in between times that their primary duty is to protect citizens, " Sukardis continued.