Between Formal Legality and Substantive Justice: Sentencing Children in Sexual Activity Cases under Aristotle's Justice

Abstract

Indonesian courts continue to imprison children in cases of sexual activity between adolescents, although the Juvenile Criminal Justice System treats deprivation of liberty as a last resort. This article examines how evidentiary proof, criminal liability, and sentencing were established in two Tebing Tinggi District Court rulings (Nos. 1/Pid.Sus-Anak/2023/PN Tbt and 5/Pid.Sus-Anak/2023/PN Tbt) and evaluates the sentences through Aristotle's theory of justice. Using normative legal research with statute and case approaches, it finds that both rulings meet the formal requirements of proof and liability, but that the courts built the decisive element of persuasion from the perpetrators' affectionate statements in an almost identical way, although the victim consented in the first case and explicitly refused in the second. Neither ruling explains why imprisonment was chosen over the alternatives available under Law Number 11 of 2012. Measured against Aristotle's distinction between general and particular justice, and against the principle of ordinal proportionality, both rulings conform to general justice but fail corrective justice, because they offer the victims no restoration, and distributive justice, because the case involving refusal received the shorter sentence. The article contributes a framework for reviewing juvenile sentencing reasons and recommends judicial guidance on the threshold of persuasion.