Disparity in Decisions Against Children in Conflict with the Law from the Perspective of Judicial Justice

The occurrence of discrepancies in rulings against Children in Conflict with the Law (ABH) highlights the diversity in how the justice principle is applied, especially when judges take aggravating and mitigating circumstances into account. Actually, through a restorative justice approach, Law No. 11 of 2012 concerning the Juvenile Criminal Justice System (UU SPPA) highlights the best interests of children and the principle of legal protection. However, judges' broad discretionary powers, without clear normative guidelines, often lead to different decisions in similar cases and open up space for non-juridical factors to influence sentences. By analyzing primary, secondary, and tertiary legal documents, this study employs a normative-juridical method to investigate the coherence of the concepts of justice, expediency, and legal certainty in juvenile criminal justice practices. The study's findings show that the primary source of disparity is the absence of uniform guidelines governing the foundation for judges' considerations., which in turn reduces the effectiveness of the SPPA Law in protecting ABH. Therefore, ius constituendum is needed in the form of firmer normative guidelines for judges, so that legal considerations no longer depend on subjective assessments, but rather on legal parameters that are consistent with the principles of justice and legal certainty.