When you picture crime, what usually comes to mind is theft, fraud, or violence. Few people immediately think of forests cleared without permits, fish poached from the sea, or mines operating outside the law. Yet crimes against the environment cause enormous damage, and their victims include not just people living today, but future generations as well.
The 2024/2025 Crime Statistics from BPS (Statistics Indonesia) include a dedicated section on this category of crime. Inside it, one figure stands out prominently: North Sumatra Regional Police recorded 1,334 incidents, roughly 32% of all environmental crimes in Indonesia. Let’s examine that number carefully.
What counts as an environmental crime?
BPS groups five types into this category:
- Forest destruction prevention and suppression offences (illegal logging)
- Plantation offences
- Fisheries offences (illegal fishing)
- Mineral and coal mining offences (illegal mining)
- Oil and gas offences
The figures for 2024 compared to 2023:
| Type | 2023 | 2024 | Trend |
|---|---|---|---|
| Plantation offences | 1,160 | 1,459 | Up |
| Oil and gas offences | 1,032 | 1,249 | Up |
| Mining (illegal mining) | 839 | 796 | Down |
| Forest destruction (illegal logging) | 560 | 446 | Down |
| Fisheries (illegal fishing) | 244 | 199 | Down |
| Total | 3,835 | 4,149 | Up |
The two types that increased—plantation and oil and gas offences—account for approximately 65% of all environmental crimes in 2024. Both also saw substantial growth compared to the prior year: plantation offences climbed about 26%, while oil and gas rose around 21%.
An uneven geographic distribution
The three regional police commands (Polda) with the highest incident counts:
- North Sumatra: 1,334 (about 32% of the national total)
- South Sumatra: 230
- East Java: 212
And those with the lowest:
- West Sulawesi: 1
- Papua: 11
- North Maluku: 19
The gap between North Sumatra and the second-ranked province is more than fivefold. Meanwhile, Papua, known for its vast rainforests and natural resources, recorded only 11 incidents.
The critical question: what does this number actually measure?
This is where critical thinking is essential. The question is not “where is environmental destruction greatest?”, but rather “where are environmental crimes most actively recorded and prosecuted?” Those are two completely different things.
First, these are crimes without reporting victims. Like narcotics, environmental crimes are rarely reported by individual victims. The victims are ecosystems, the broader public, or future generations. For a case to be recorded, law enforcement or inspectors must actively discover it, investigate, and take action. The recorded case count reflects enforcement and surveillance capacity, not simply the true underlying number of violations.
Second, an extremely low figure does not automatically mean a pristine area. Recording 1 incident in West Sulawesi or 11 in Papua could mean violations are genuinely rare. But it could also reflect limited surveillance across vast, rugged terrain with few enforcement personnel available. In such contexts, “unrecorded” is not the same as “non-existent.”
Third, a high figure can indicate active enforcement. A province with elevated numbers may indeed have more violations. But it may also have a police force that is particularly active in investigating and cracking down, bringing more cases to light. In certain settings, a rising number signals improving enforcement rather than deteriorating environmental conditions.
Fourth, the local economic structure shapes the types of offences. Plantation hubs will naturally record more plantation offences. Oil-producing regions will log more oil and gas offences. Regional disparities largely mirror differences in economic geography, not the moral character of residents.
The takeaway: enforcement statistics measure institutional activity
This is perhaps the most important lesson from this dataset, and it applies equally to narcotics, corruption, and many other crimes: police registration data for crimes without individual reporting victims measure law enforcement activity, not the true scale of the underlying problem. Using them to declare “Province X is the most degraded” or “Province Y is the cleanest” is a leap unsupported by data.
To measure actual environmental damage, we need different data sources: satellite imagery on forest cover change, licensing databases, field surveys, ecological loss assessments, and environmental quality metrics. Criminal statistics fill only one piece of the puzzle.
What can researchers explore further?
For researchers and students, several questions are worth exploring:
- Is there a relationship between recorded case counts and enforcement resources across regions (investigators, budgets, territorial reach)?
- How do environmental crime statistics correlate with remote sensing data on land cover change?
- Why did plantation and oil and gas offences rise while others declined? Were there regulatory shifts, commodity price changes, or specific operations?
- How do recorded environmental cases progress through prosecution, sentencing, and environmental remediation? Initial police statistics tell only the opening chapter of the legal process.
Each question demands additional data and a far more rigorous approach than simply contrasting headline totals across provinces.
Concluding thoughts
Environmental crime demands that we look beyond headline statistics. Data remains essential, provided we are candid about what it measures. The figure of 4,149 is not a balance sheet of environmental degradation in Indonesia. It is a record of cases that made it into the formal enforcement system. What remains unrecorded—and what has been degraded without documentation—may well be vastly larger.
Combining enforcement data with environmental indicators
To evaluate environmental crime comprehensively, enforcement statistics must be paired with independent environmental metrics. Remote sensing (satellite imagery) can track changes in canopy cover or illegal mining footprints. Concession and licensing registers document lawful activities. Water, air, and soil quality monitoring reveal real-world impact. Natural resource revenues show economic stakes. Laying these layers together allows us to ask a far more meaningful question: which areas show significant environmental disturbance yet report virtually no legal cases? That gap is where true surveillance deficiencies lie.
Community-based prevention
Law enforcement alone is rarely sufficient. Evidence from many regions indicates that environmental crimes are prevented most effectively when surrounding communities have a tangible stake in safeguarding resources—such as through community forestry, small-scale fisheries co-management, or secure whistleblowing channels that guarantee follow-up. Crime statistics capture these outcomes in an ironic way: recorded complaints may initially surge as community trust improves, signaling that the oversight system has finally begun to work.
Research ideas for students
Compelling research topics include: examining the link between provincial police enforcement capacity and recorded environmental case volumes; comparative analysis of environmental offence categories mapped to regional economic structure; or qualitative case studies examining how provinces with high reporting rates developed their specialized investigation units. Each pairs empirical rigor with institutional insight.
Quick Q&A
Why is the total number of environmental crimes relatively small compared to other offences? Partly because these offences are less frequently detected through citizen reports, and enforcement requires specialized resources (technical investigators, expert witnesses, formal damage assessments). Investigations are also technically complex and lengthy, meaning cases often take more than one reporting cycle to conclude.
Does a rising number mean environmental destruction is accelerating? Not necessarily. It can indicate strengthened enforcement and proactive inspections. This is why environmental crime records must always be interpreted alongside independent environmental condition indicators.
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