High profile international cases are just the start of Indonesia's immense drug problem. While laws changed to decriminalise drug use in 2009, thousands are still incarcerated every year -- and drug advocates say overcrowded conditions and high HIV levels in prisons only serve to compound the problem.
Yola is 32 and has been in prison for two years and nine months. Her life is contained within a small clump of buildings that make up Pondok Bambu detention centre in Jakarta.
Inside, visitors gather in an open courtyard while inmates make phone calls, attend beading classes or visit the health clinic. There's a beauty salon, too, but prisoners have to pay to visit, and there are no customers today.
Around half of the 1005 inmates at Pondok Bambu have been detained for drug offences. Yola is one of them. She was a heroin user with a $1 million Rupiah (around AUD $109) a day habit. She also sold it to help sustain her addiction.
But, she says, those days are over now.
"I don't want to, never more," she tells me through an interpreter. "I feel that I'm in shambles, my life's completely ruined... in pieces."
Yola is now on the prison's methadone program.
She's grateful, but she's also lucky.
Methadone clinics are a vital step in addressing high levels of HIV that exists among Indonesia's prison population, but they're rare, with only nine in prisons across the country.
Prevalence of HIV is as low as 2 per cent of the population in Indonesia, but among injecting drug users it's at epidemic levels.
The clinic at Pondok Bambu is funded in part by the Global Fund to fight AIDS, Malaria and Tuberculosis, which receives aid from international donors including the Australian government.
Drug user advocate Edo Nasution has been arrested "nine or ten times" for drug use. He believes harsh prison penalties don't have enough focus on rehabilitation.
He says dangerous practices such as renting needles were common in the jails he spent time in, and drugs were often available.
"Even when I was in a detention centre, drugs were very easy to get," he says. "In fact, it was more difficult to get a sterile needle than it was to get drugs."
In 2009, a new law was introduced that effectively decriminalised drug use, but in many cases, those who get caught will still end up behind bars.
Taufiquar Rakhman, the director of Salemba Prison which houses more than a thousand prisoners held for drug-related offences, says change is slowly starting to occur.
"Now days, more and more drug users are not being sent to the prison but to the rehabilitation centres," he says.
"From several aspects and points of view, I agree that drug users are the victims so they should be sent to the rehabilitation centre not to the prison."
Back in Pondok Bambu, Yola has a different view. She thinks her sentence of five years, four months is too harsh, and she's hoping to appeal. She's not optimistic of the outcome.
“I feel that the processes nowadays are a bit tougher than before.”
In the meantime, she spends her days beading in the cell she shares with 18 people, and hopes to run a small business when she finally leaves prison.
She dreams of being reunited with the daughter she hasn't seen in almost a decade. And there's been another big change to her life.
“When I [was] outside, I forgot everything about religion, but now I've started to pray.”
Rhiannon travelled with the finanical support of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Malaria and Tuberculosis.
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