Criminal Law Enforcement Against Illegal Nickel Mining in Kolaka, Southeast Sulawesi: Toward Deterrent and Ecologically Restorative Sentencing

This article analyzes criminal law enforcement against illegal nickel mining in Kolaka, Southeast Sulawesi, and evaluates whether the applicable sanctions serve deterrent, preventive, and ecological-restoration objectives. The study uses normative juridical research with statute and conceptual approaches, drawing on the author’s thesis as the contextual case foundation and updating the legal analysis through Indonesia’s current mining, environmental, forestry, and anti-money-laundering framework. The study finds that illegal mining should not be treated as a single licensing violation. Depending on the proven facts, enforcement may combine unauthorized-mining offences, false reporting, failure to conduct reclamation and post-mining obligations, environmental crimes, corporate liability, and asset-recovery measures. The principal constraints are fragmented institutional authority, weak integration of permit and environmental data, difficulties in proving ecological harm and corporate control, conflicts of interest arising from local economic dependence on mining, and sentencing practices that do not consistently finance restoration. The article proposes an integrated enforcement model based on joint permit audits, parallel criminal and ecological investigations, beneficial-owner and asset tracing, protection of community informants, and judicial orders that combine proportionate punishment with disgorgement and verified environmental recovery. Such a model better aligns mining law enforcement with constitutional control of natural resources and intergenerational environmental justice.