Criminal Liability for Negligence in a Residential Islamic School Fire in Central Lombok, Indonesia

The December 2025 fire at an Islamic boarding school in Central Lombok, Indonesia, injured several students and caused one death, according to public police reports. Police later named a 15-year-old student and the school leader as suspects. This article examines individual negligence, residential-school safety, juvenile procedure, and child-victim recovery where the alleged conduct predates the National Criminal Code and public investigative developments followed major legal reforms. The study uses normative legal research through statutory, conceptual, case, and internal comparative approaches. It analyses legislation, peer-reviewed studies, and official police and Ombudsman statements available through 8 September 2026. Substantive liability begins with the law in force on 13 December 2025, followed by the concrete comparison required by Article 3 of the National Criminal Code as amended by Law No. 1 of 2026. The procedural law depends on the transition rule in Article 361 of Law No. 20 of 2025, which distinguishes cases already under investigation or prosecution from earlier offences whose investigation or prosecution had not begun when the new Code took effect. Juvenile safeguards continue to apply. The Pesantren Law requires residential facilities to consider safety, but a regulatory breach alone does not establish an individual’s criminal fault or causation. Public reports raise questions about fuel handling, supervision, operating permission, and reporting, but the available record does not establish which duty was breached, who could prevent the risk, or how each alleged act caused each injury. The article develops a four-layer framework for temporal legality, personal culpability, child-sensitive procedure, and institutional prevention and recovery. It closes by identifying empirical and doctrinal questions for research after adjudication.

criminal negligence, child justice, pesantren, transitional criminal law, victim restitution

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