DG: 200 Thousand Inmates to be Santri

Martapura, (Antaranews Kalimantan) - Director General of Corrections Ministry of Justice and Human Rights I Wayan Kusmiantha Dusak said 200 thousand prisoners across Indonesia to be santri or Islamic students in prison.

"All Muslims inmates in all prisons in Indonesia are required to be santri at the Islamic boarding school (pesantren), which opened in the prisons," he said in LPKA Class I Martapura, South Kalimantan, on Tuesday.

He said the pesantren-based guidance programs for all inmates in the prison environment is a program implemented by the ministry to begin early in 2017.

The programm is a form of religious personality development and a mandatory to any prisoner.

"The program is mandatory for all prisoners. The goal is to develop their personality to be better and higher religious knowledge after serving their sentences," he said.

According to him, the current pesantren in the prison environment has been applied in Cianjur, West Java, which became a pilot Islamic boarding school in Indonesia.

Meanwhile, pesantren in children prison (LPKA) class I Martapura is the only one applied outside Java, or the first in the of Central and East Indonesia.

"Our hope, pesantren in LPKA Class I Martapura to be a model for other prisons outside Java and other prisons in the Central and East and Indonesia," he said.

The number of inmates in all prisons in Indonesia as many as 200 thousand is high, although lower than in other countries such as China, India and Thailand.