The outlook is bright on this side of the world for convicted murderers, particularly those who plot to assassinate the law enforcers who punished them for other crimes.

All one has to do is sit pretty, preferably with a good number of handy connections and a deep pot of cash. The rewards of patience will come, perhaps slowly but steadily, in the form of multiple chunks of sentence cuts – and whoa, you're free!

That's been the message coming out loud and clear since Hutomo Mandala Putra, popularly known as Tommy Soeharto, walked out of jail on a conditional release last Monday with a beaming face. His release stamped out any claim of progress that the country has made toward delivering real justice.

Instead we gave a slap in the face to all victims of injustice, including the family of the late Supreme Court justice, Syafiuddin Kartasasmita. If the deck had not been stacked in Tommy's favor, "he would still be in jail," said his widow, Soimah. Her husband, who was gunned down in broad daylight in July 2001, had sentenced Tommy to 18 months in prison for his role in a land scam.

Having been found guilty of masterminding the murder, Tommy, initially sentenced to 15 years for this crime, joined thousands of convicts waiting to be grouped neatly into those who deserved sentence reductions and those who did not – and his "good behavior" meant he was entitled to such a privilege.

What policy-makers were thinking when they drew up the new criteria for sentence cuts is not quite clear. Convicts like Tommy were not declared ineligible for sentence cuts; only terrorists, drug traffickers, and those guilty of "human rights abuses" and transnational crimes were denied them.

The new government regulation issued in July this year also changed the minimum sentence that must be served before any convict's sentence can be cut. Convicts can no longer waltz out after a token period behind bars. They have to serve at least two-thirds of their term, instead of only half their term.

Here there seemed to be some improvement. Australians who howled over the sentence cuts and eventual freedom of Muslim cleric Abu Bakar Ba'asyir were somewhat mollified, while the government effectively conveyed the idea that drug traffickers of any nationality were in the same league as those spreading terror.

So, going by the book, which never mentioned whether people guilty of premeditated murder deserve a one-day reduction, or a month, or even two,Tommy was freed. He has served less than half of the final sentence of 10 years he received on appeal, and now he is a free man with the luxury of mulling a pilgrimage trip. Some think he might just as well be allowed to report to parole officers by text message from Mecca.

Of course we're left with a big gap between what is legal and what has now become a hallmark of this country's bizarre picture of justice. Even the review of the 1999 rule on sentence cuts failed to use the opportunity to insert a bit more sense into the handling of convicts.

The family of the late Syafiuddin is not alone in thinking their country could do much better than completely ignoring the magnitude of the crime. This was not death by mugging. Syafiuddin sat on the country's highest judicial institution, handling the case of the offspring of a much-feared ruler.

Judges across the archipelago know full well that in their daily work they can either profit handsomely from many a dispute, or risk intimidation and even lose their lives if they are seen as trying to mete out what they believe constitutes justice. The murder of Syafiuddin, and the subsequent release of the jovial mastermind, can only strengthen their conviction that an honest judge is not what the country really needs.

For those seeking justice, formal declarations of attempted judicial reforms will ring increasingly hollow. A further review of the regulation to exempt privileges for those guilty of extraordinary crimes, including corruption, would lend a little more credibility to those who enjoy the people's votes.