KEBIJAKAN KRIMINAL TERHADAP PERKAWINAN ANAK DI BAWAH UMUR DALAM UPAYA PERLINDUNGAN ANAK

Child abuse has long been associated with physical and sexual violence. However, various studies show that psychological and social abuse—such as child marriage—causes even more severe and long-term impacts on children’s physical, mental, and social well-being. The dispensation mechanism under Article 7 paragraph (2) of Law No. 16 of 2019 provides a legal loophole for legitimizing child marriage and creates disharmony with the Child Protection Law and the principle of the best interests of the child. This study aims to examine the urgency of criminalizing child marriage as a progressive penal policy within Indonesia's
child protection system. This research employs a normative juridical method using statutory, conceptual, and comparative approaches. The theoretical framework includes: the Theory of
Law Enforcement (Lawrence M. Friedman), Social Control Theory (Travis Hirschi), The Harm Principle (John Stuart Mill), Criminalization Theory (Theo de Roos), and Comparative Law Theory (Barda Nawawi Arief and Rudolf B. Schlesinger), further analyzed through the lens of criminal law policy and child
protection theory. A comparative study was conducted on countries such as the Philippines, the United Kingdom (England and Wales), and U.S. states like Rhode Island that have enacted strict prohibitions on child marriage. The findings indicate that non-penal approaches have been insufficient in curbing
child marriage practices. Therefore, limited criminalization targeting perpetrators and facilitators of child marriage should be applied as a lawful, proportional, and urgent legal intervention. This study contributes novelty by integrating penal and comparative approaches into an issue traditionally addressed through social measures and provides an academic foundation for future interdisciplinary and human rights-based research on child protection.
Keywords: child marriage, child protection, criminalization, marriage dispensation, penal policy.