Regular Discussion: Cross-Country Insights on Policing with Limited Budgets

August 11, 2025 — “How can Indonesia allocate limited budgets for optimal policing?” is one of the core questions addressed in the Department of Criminology’s regular discussions. Held at the Mochtar Riady Social & Research Center building in Universitas Indonesia’s Faculty of Social and Political Science, this discussion featured Senior Police Commissioner Nakanishi Akira, Advisor to the Chief of the Indonesian National Police, and Detective Inspector Paul Borrell, New Zealand Police Liaison Officer for Indonesia, the Philippines, Singapore, and Timor Leste.

Starting with a comparative graph of the Indonesian and Japanese police forces, Nakanishi Akira outlined several factors to consider when discussing policing budgets. Human resource capacity and the legitimacy of the police are two key elements influencing budget allocation and its effective utilization. The discussion then continued with Detective Inspector Paul Borrell’s session, who elaborated on specific conditions that differentiate budget allocation priorities between the Indonesian and New Zealand police forces. These conditions include population, geographical area, special interests (such as budgets for monitoring demonstration areas), and more.

Community Policing as an Initial Step towards Budget Savings

Beyond various conditions and factors, the methods employed by the New Zealand and Japanese police to save budget were also discussed. Given that not all budget requests submitted to the state are fulfilled, targeted allocation becomes a crucial strategy. One way to save budget is to optimize policing efforts at the prevention stage, ranging from education to the development of community policing ( community policing). Preventive measures are a crucial key to budget savings. If the prevention steps were carried out optimally, more budget will only increase for subsequent stages, such as investigation and court proceedings.

Enthusiasm was evident through the audience’s questions posed during the Q session. Most of the audience was engrossed in how the policies and savings measures implemented by the New Zealand and Japanese police could be applied to the conditions of the Indonesian National Police.

Although there are many differences in conditions and situations between police forces that make these measures are not optimally replicable, Nakanishi Akira stated that the most important thing is to know what the community wants in terms of policing.

“In policing, it is important to know the expectations harbored by the community.”

Furthermore, the community must also know that the police have budget limitations for policing. In this regard, transparency from the police is needed to formulate policing measures that remain targeted and satisfy the community.

Lasted for approximately two hours, this discussion is one form of commitment from the Department of Criminology to foster critical dialogue in Indonesian policing efforts, which inherently also requires a lot of attention as an important part of the criminal justice system.