THE ESSENCE OF CORPORATE CRIMINAL LIABILITY IN THE INDONESIAN CRIMINAL LAW

Abstract The growing scope of corporate activities across various sectors has created an urgency to recognize corporations as subjects of criminal law. Historically, Indonesia’s criminal law system has not explicitly regulated this matter; however, through the New Penal Code and various sectoral laws, there has been an expansion in recognizing non-human legal subjects. This paper examines the essence of corporate criminal liability from ontological, epistemological, and axiological perspectives. This research is a normative legal study. The approaches employed in this research include statutory, conceptual, philosophical, and case-based approaches. The theoretical framework used as an analytical tool comprises the theories of legal fiction, concession, and corporate aggregate, realist theory, symbolic theory, contract convergence theory, John Rawls' theory of justice, and utilitarianism. The findings indicate that, in modern criminal law, corporations are recognized as autonomous legal subjects with the capacity to act and bear responsibility independently. Realist and organic approaches serve as the primary foundations, replacing classical views that attribute liability solely to individual corporate officers. The essence of corporate criminal liability in Indonesian criminal law lies in the recognition that corporations are legal entities capable of acting and being held criminally accountable. This approach targets not only individuals but also corporate entities whose structures and policies may lead to the commission of criminal offenses.