<![CDATA[The incorporation of restorative justice into Indonesia's 2025 Criminal Procedure Code transforms it from a predominantly sectoral policy into a formal mechanism of criminal procedure. Stronger legality, however, does not automatically ensure welfare for victims and offenders. This study examines the post-2025 legal architecture of restorative justice and develops a maslahah-based set of safeguards against coerced reconciliation, marginalisation of victims, and case termination that is detached from genuine restoration. It applies normative legal research through statutory, conceptual, and functional comparative approaches, combining Indonesian law with recent scholarship on victim participation, offender accountability, risk, reparation, and reintegration. The findings show that the new Code regulates case eligibility, voluntariness, forms of restoration, performance of agreements, termination of proceedings, and judicial control, while operational protection and cross-institutional harmonisation remain unfinished. The article proposes a Restorative Maslahah Safeguard Framework consisting of four cumulative gates: legality and case eligibility, voluntariness and victim protection, accountable restoration by the offender, and legal validation with reintegration. Its novelty lies in translating maslahah from an abstract normative aspiration into a procedural test that balances victim restoration, offender responsibility, public interest, and legal certainty. The framework rejects the assumption that every settlement is restorative and treats protection as a condition of legitimate reconciliation.]]>
