Criminal procedure reform in Indonesia’s 2025 code: institutional power and the limits of legal change in a hybrid regime

This article examines Indonesia’s newly enacted Code of Criminal Procedure (KUHAP) as a case of constrained legal reform within a hybrid political setting. Drawing on legislative archives, public consultations, and contemporaneous public discourse, it analyses how competing claims advanced by state authorities and civil society actors shaped the final design of the 2025 KUHAP. Rather than assessing the reform in binary terms as either progressive or regressive, the article situates criminal procedure law as a mode of governance through which legitimacy is managed and institutional power preserved. It argues that while the new KUHAP expands rights at the level of statutory recognition, particularly for suspects, defence counsel, victims, and marginalised groups, it leaves the underlying authoritarian architecture largely intact. The Team of Twelve, an inter-institutional forum, was central to the bargain that enabled reform while limiting the recalibration of institutional power. The Indonesian case demonstrates how due process ideals may be selectively incorporated and constrained by historically embedded institutional arrangements. .