Crocodiles To Guard Island Prison, Where Drug Convicts Must Fight To Survive


Indonesia is counting on crocodiles‘ morally incorruptible nature and complete lack of empathy to keep their drug convicts in line.

In a plan that sounds like a fiction, but is actually 100 percent fact, the country’s drug agency is recruiting the best and most ferocious crocs as prison guards, the Guardian reported.

Apparently, the brains behind the bizarre plan, anti-drugs chief Budi Waseso, was inspired by James Bond film Live and Let Die, in which 007 escapes an island using crocodiles as stepping stones. Apparently, Budi is banking on the convicts’ inability to craft this novel getaway.

So what is going on in Indonesia that its law enforcement officials are turning to crocodiles to populate a force of prison guards? A serious problem with drugs and drug trafficking, and a harsh, zero tolerance policy against offenders, that’s what.

Indonesia recruiting crocodile prison guards for island prison
YouTube Screengrab of moment James Bond begins his crocodile leap

Without the crocodiles/prison guards at work, Indonesia is home to some of the toughest anti-drug laws on the planet. Traffickers can be killed by firing squad (and in April, they executed seven foreign traffickers to international uproar), a punishment president Joko Widodo said is necessary because Indonesia’s drug problem is a “national emergency.”

Executions were prohibited for four years, but a moratorium on them ended in 2013, BBC added.

To make matters even worse, the country’s prison system is corrupt and full of drugs. Inmates and jail staff are both arrested often for drug offenses. Traffickers often recruit other inmates into drug gangs.

After brainstorming ways to prevent drug offenders from managing drug networks while in prison, this this is the only solution (or perhaps the one that stood out as the most outlandish and cool) Waseso came up with. According to him, replacing human prison guards with crocodiles would stop such corruption — and it’s the only solution.

“You can’t bribe crocodiles. You can’t convince them to let inmates escape.”

That part of his logic, at least, does appear to be sound.

Budi is now on the hunt for crocodiles to recruit as prison guards. According to RT, he will visit a farm of crocodiles in North Sumatra, another in a province called Papua, and the island of Sulawesi. He only wants the worst of the worst.

“We will place as many crocodiles as we can there. I will search for the most ferocious type of crocodile.”

The prison is meant to be a special treat for traffickers on death row. These criminals will be the prison’s only inmates — the intention, of course, to keep the men separate from people they would likely recruit if they were locked up in other facilities and allowed to mingle with the general population.

Indonesia recruiting crocodile prison guards for island prison
[Photo By mahargarani saragih / Shutterstock]
The fact that this prison will have crocodiles as guards isn’t even the most disturbing, or bizarre, part of the story. The prison will be built on a remote island, completely cut off from the outside world, with crocodiles thick in its surrounding waters.

The inmates will be left there, stranded, to survive completely on their own — they will also have to figure out how to get along with the crocodiles. And as Budi planned, these prison guards won’t be able to help them get off their isolated prison.

But don’t worry — the criminals won’t be forced to hunt and forage for their own food.

“We will keep sending them food supplies every day. But they have to survive on their own,” Budi assured.

For now, Indonesia is barreling ahead with this plan, which is in its early stages. The location or opening date are as yet unknown, and though the justice and human rights ministry is apparently involved, it hasn’t approved anything. However, a government spokesman has confirmed the plan to build a “special prison for death row convicts.”

[Photo By Volodymyr Burdiak / Shutterstock]

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