7.3 Institutional Analysis of Formal Law Enforcement
Maintaining rules on destructive fishing is dependent on the existence of monitoring measures. These measures have been carrying out by government
institutions, namely the management authority of Marine National Park and Tourism Marine Park, fishery office, police, army and navy.
Based on the empirical findings, formal law enforcement has at least three weaknesses: lack of ability to prevent free riders, high management cost, and
deficiency to sanction. These shortcomings contributed to declining trust over law enforcement.
Lack of Ability to Prevent Free Rider
Rules enforcement and monitoring measures carried out by government institutions had been not able to prevent free riders. Free riders can emerge from
anywhere. They may be civil servants, military, law enforcement officers, or legal and illegal entrepreneurs. The presence of free riders evokes at least two
concerns. First, free riders possess a selfish character and will exploit marine resources without any consideration on the consequences for other people and
the future. Second, they have tendency to make alliance with other parties to protect their interests. As in the case of forestry, illegal logging entrepreneurs are
very easy to eradicate when they have no alliance with the authorities Nugroho 2004.
Alliances between blast or poison fishing patrons and officers were observable. Trade of highly-commercial fishes offers profitable business.
Supports for the continuing practice have been maintained. Some officers encouraged and backed blast or poison fishing Coremap- Socioeconomic Team
2001; Coremap-LP3M 2002; MCS 2003; KCC 2003. Sea patrols had occasionally been already known in advance by illegal fishers, thus they could
avoid it KCC 2000a. Nevertheless, conflicting interests among different officers existed. Park
rangers have had conflict with other officers, such as binsa or police, who backed the illegal practices KCC 2000a, 2003. In fact, fishermen were afraid of dealing
with police, but they increasingly realize that a violation case can be arranged by paying some money. A captured perpetrator could be released without conviction
if paid 5 millions rupiahs in the case of no strong evidence and paid 10 millions rupiahs if there was evidence. Likewise, if they were sentenced by a prison term,
they could spend shorter term, while paying a sum of 10 to 20 millions rupiahs. In
any case, it was alleged that a bribe to park rangers for one boat used for destructive fishing was 500,000 rupiahs. In compromising illegal activities, park
rangers received either money or fishes from fishermen or intermediary traders. However, alliances between officers and fishers or fishing traders are
vulnerable to the free riding behavior of officers towards their agreements. Strategic costs were increasingly worrying fishers. Illegal fishers had been
gradually aware that officers took bribes for granted, and frequently they did not protect or help out fishers when they captured by the law enforcers Media,
unknown date. Weak supervision over free riding and rent seeking behavior, particularly
those done by officers, had made the practice continued. Nonetheless, free riders continue to exist because of high management costs of patrolling and deficiency
to sanction offenders or free riders.
High Management Cost
Number of patrols by police, park rangers, navy and other authorities in study area is still inadequate to enforce the existing Marine Park and fisheries
resource regulations. Likewise, patrolling entails high transaction cost, and coupled with lack of means and funding, resulted in unworkable patrolling and
MCS system. In this regard, high transaction cost is on coordination and information costs Ostrom et al. 1994. In short the enforcement failure led to the
marine resources become de facto open access Hardin 1968. Nevertheless, the costs are not only financial costs, but also social costs
that should be borne by park rangers assigned in marine parks of remote small islands. Many of them require leaving their family. On the other hand, stationed in
a remote small island, officers are dependable on this community, such as receiving fish or transportation service to or from the district’s capital. Thus,
maintaining good relationships with the island residents is inevitable. Their dependency to the community makes them uneasy to enforce law and capture
the unlawful island residents. This situation is again opening the opportunity to free ride rather to perform duty strictly.
Deficiency to Sanction
Sanction is required for rules compliance, and only formal sanctioning process must be followed. The judiciary process requires a strong evident, which
consists of the bomb or poison ready to use and the fish caught by those tools.
Other requirements are witness, or officers were catching offenders in the act. This rule is based on the Criminal Code Procedures KUHAP, which is strictly
followed by police and public persecutor. In reality, evidence was frequently not sufficient for judiciary process,
because the use of bombs and cyanide is very difficult to prove or to obtain. Likewise, it is difficult to catch offenders in the act Coremap-LP3M 2002b.
These requirements have made many offenders could not be detained or followed a judiciary process. A report based on a suspicion but without any
evidence is not enough to detain offenders. Thus, community had learned that if offenders can evade from sanctions, then it is pointless to comply with rule of law.
Many has admitted that the judiciary processes in the capital shown indication of corruption and not transparent, and punishments have rarely been
imposed or were insubstantial. Law enforcement process for offenders were sluggish, from detention, investigation to judiciary process, and often resulted in
light charge and punishment LP3M 2000; MCS 2002a; Jufri 2006. Thus, the process of formal law enforcement against lawbreaker is
cumbersome, complex, and rarely reliable, because of difficulty to obtain complete evidence in order to verdict offender. This resulted in lowering
motivation of many officers, especially park rangers, to enforce rules. It increased incentives for officers to free ride, i.e. receive bribes from offenders by
disregarding enforcement rules.
Decrease Trust to Law Enforcement
Above situation gives rise to an ongoing conviction of fishers’ community that formal law enforcement is not consistent 61 percent. Only 10 percent
responses said it is consistent. Thus, majority believes that law is something that can be compromised when the money is engaged unable to prevent free rider,
cannot punish offenders deficient in sanctioning, or cannot be monitored effectively due to high management cost.
The failure to enforce law, even by officers themselves, resulted in accumulated courage for fishermen to follow illegal activities. In some instances,
resident blast or poison fishers were not afraid of park rangers and local leaders that assigned in their island, but more afraid of the facilitators of the external
assistance.
7.4 Fishers’ Rules and Collective Action in Coastal Fishery
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