Mass jailbreak in Indonesia: 28 inmates still at large

• A manhunt is under way after more than 50 inmates escaped from Kutacane Penitentiary in Aceh.
• The breakout, blamed on overcrowding, left 28 inmates still at large.
• Officials urge escapees to surrender, highlighting issues of overcrowding and under-staffing in Indonesian prisons.

A manhunt is under way after more than 50 inmates escaped from an Indonesian prison in a mass breakout.

Footage on social media shows men jumping fences, crashing past food vendors and scrambling across the prison’s roof, having broken through the front gate at Kutacane Penitentiary in Aceh.

Locals in the town, in the archipelago’s westernmost province, sought to grab the fugitives before they had a chance to escape, but officials said on Wednesday that 28 inmates remained at large.

The jailbreak – which began in the queue for food at dusk on Monday – has been blamed on prison overcrowding, a major issue across Indonesia.

Last month, Agus Andrianto, the Minister of Immigration and Corrections, warned that prisons nationwide were at 87% over-capacity.

After Monday’s incident, Andrianto told Antara news agency the facility at Kutacane was built to accommodate 100 people but currently housed 368 inmates.

Many of the men were in jail on narcotics-related charges. Andrianto has suggested that more drug addicts should be rehabilitated rather than criminalised, in an effort to reduce the burden on overcrowded jails.

But concerns have also been raised about under-staffing.

Andi, a warden at the facility, told The Jakarta Post: “The security ratio was unbalanced. If the inmates had incited a riot or attempted an escape, the available personnel would not have been enough to control the situation.”

For now, officials said they are combing the region to locate the escapees, and encouraging anyone still at large to hand themselves in to avoid tough new punishments.

Doni Sumarsono, the area’s police chief, said: “We are still actively searching for the remaining fugitives and urge them to surrender. It’s better to turn yourselves in than face harsher sentences.”

This is not the first jailbreak in Indonesia.

In November last year, seven inmates escaped a detention centre in central Jakarta by breaking through bathroom grilles leading to a sewer, while four men scaled the walls to escape a facility in Central Kalimantan in 2023.