Criminal Act Settlement of Traffic Accidents Investigation Based on Restorative Justice

Contradictions often occur in criminal act of traffic accidents where perpetrators have usually settled their obligations by providing compensation to victims or victims' families, yet they remain subject to criminal sanctions. This condition is often perceived unfair among perpetrators. Hence, a discourse to seek for diversion using restorative justice approach for the perpetrators of road traffic crimes emerged. A normative juridical approach was used in this explanatory research. The results showed that in handling traffic accident cases, the Indonesian National Police (Polri) as investigators can use discretion as stipulated in Article 18 of Law Number 2 of 2002 concerning the Indonesian National Police. This discretion allows investigators to refer to the restorative justice mechanism to provide justice for all parties, including the perpetrator, the victim and the community. The new traffic crime law goes in accordance with the principles of justice Restorative also conforms with philosophical objective of law, namely, to determine perpetrators’ responsibility according to the qualitative measurement of their actions.