Ahmad Pathoni – Twenty-five teenagers were crammed in a 20-square-meter cell in the main prison in the Indonesian city of Bogor. The smell of damp mattresses wafted through the room.
"I feel at home here," said one of the inmates, Slamet Riyadi, 16, sitting on the floor as his cellmates played basketball outside. "It feels like being in a boarding school," said Riyadi, who had served one year of a three-year sentence for what he described as "consensual teenage sex."
Riyadi is one of 30 child prisoners, including five girls, who are serving time in the Bogor Penitentiary, 50 kilometers south of Jakarta.
Their crimes range from murder to drug abuse and their ages range from 13 to 18. Under Indonesia's juvenile-justice laws, children as young as 8 can be tried for crimes, and those as young as 12 can be imprisoned.
About 5,000 children are now in prisons in Indonesia, but a shortage of juvenile lock-ups often means some of them occupy adult prisons, officials and activists said.
Arist Merdeka Sirait, secretary general of the National Child Protection Commission, a nongovernmental organization, said child inmates are at high risk of physical, sexual and emotional abuse from other detainees. "Many children who are held in such conditions commit more crimes when they get out of jail," he said.
The Constitutional Court is hearing a petition filed by the commission requesting the 1997 law on juvenile justice be annulled.
Sirait argued there was no evidence that keeping children in jail had a deterrent effect. "Often they become more violent and their psychological development is impaired," he said. "They also show deviant sexual behavior."
The Bogor prison is designed for 500 adult inmates, but it currently holds more than 1,100 prisoners.
Risman Somantri, head of the prison's education and training division, said the young inmates were held there because they refused to be sent to the nearest juvenile prison, located in the neighboring district of Tangerang.
"They wanted to be close to their families," Somantri said. "They said that being far from their loved ones was like double punishment for them."
Somantri said to prevent the child inmates from mixing with adults, they have separate out-of-cell and recreational schedules. "The system doesn't solve all the problems, but it has been effective in minimizing their contact with adult inmates," he said.
Outside the children's cell, a 16-year-old boy sat crying with his eyes reddened. "He has a headache," said a fellow inmate who declined to give his name.
Sirait warned that the system treats children like adult criminals. "Because there's a lack of space and facilities, they don't get decent treatment and are often mixed with adults," he said. "Some of them are even younger than 12."
In a case that sparked a public outcry last year, police arrested 10 shoeshine boys at Jakarta's Soekarno-Hatta International Airport for playing a coin-toss game.
A court found the children, 12 to 16, guilty of gambling but opted not to give them prison sentences after public criticism of the way they were treated by police.
But things could soon change. The government is drafting a new bill on juvenile justice that is child-sensitive.
"In future, children subjected to the justice process won't be sent to prisons but to social rehabilitation homes," said Social Affairs Minister Salim Segaf al Jufrie, whose office is involved in the drafting of the bill. "In prisons, children often mix with adults," the minister said. "That's neither healthy nor just."
Untung Sugiono, the director general of the correctional system at the Justice Ministry, insisted that child prisoners receive treatment suited to their age group.
"We cater to their needs, including education," Sugiono said. "Not all cities in Indonesia have child prisons, but there are blocks designed for child prisoners.
"Everybody knows that prisons are high learning institutions for crime, but our law still allows children to be kept in prisons," he said. "But we are working toward restorative justice, which offers alternatives to the punitive approach."
The prison In Bogor keeps its children busy with activities that include English lessons, Koranic and other religious studies as well as playing music and sports.
For Riyadi, being imprisoned at Bogor had given him the opportunity to learn about his religion. "If I was free, I wouldn't be reading the Koran or learning about Islamic teachings," he said. "I feel I'm a better person now."