<![CDATA[Supreme Court Regulation (PERMA) No. 3 of 2026 operationalizes judicial pardon under Indonesia’s new criminal procedure framework by allowing a court to declare guilt while withholding punishment on grounds of justice and humanity. The regulation is an important humanizing instrument, yet its open-ended criteria, its relationship with restorative justice, and the status of victim-related factors create risks of inconsistent and socioeconomically unequal application. This article reconstructs the model through Indonesian positive law, comparative criminal procedure, and Islamic legal reasoning. It employs normative-doctrinal research using statutory, conceptual, comparative, and Islamic legal-hermeneutic approaches. Primary materials include the new Criminal Code, the 2025 Criminal Procedure Code, PERMA No. 3 of 2026, Malaysian and Bruneian legislation, Aceh jināyah regulations, Qur’anic norms, and classical and contemporary works on Islamic criminal law. The article finds three principal tensions rather than literal contradictions: insufficient weighting among pardon factors; possible conflation of judicial pardon with restorative settlement; and inadequate safeguards against unequal, victim-insensitive, or weakly reasoned decisions. Taʿzīr supplies the closest functional analogy because it permits bounded sentencing discretion, but it cannot be generalized to ḥudūd or qiṣāṣ–diyah, where proof rules and victims’ rights differ. A reconstructed model therefore requires a seriousness threshold, structured culpability and proportionality review, non-dispositive treatment of apology and forgiveness, an explicit maqāṣid/maṣlaḥah harm–benefit assessment, reason-giving, appellate control, equality safeguards, and a legally grounded victim-reparation route. This model connects judicial mercy with the values of ʿadl and raḥmah while preserving legality, public protection, and trust within Indonesia’s plural Muslim society.]]>
