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Abstract

Despite sharing colonial legacies in the development of their criminal law systems, Indonesia and Malaysia have pursued markedly different paths of criminal law reform, reflecting their distinct legal traditions and legislative philosophies. This article examines how these divergent reform trajectories are manifested through a comparative analysis of Indonesia's Law Number 1 of 2023 on the Criminal Code and Malaysia's Penal Code (Act 574). Focusing on three analytical dimensions—the principle of legality, criminal responsibility, and sentencing policy—the study adopts a normative legal research method supported by statutory, conceptual, and comparative approaches. Legal materials were collected through library-based research and analysed qualitatively using a descriptive-comparative method. The findings reveal that while both jurisdictions continue to rely on codified criminal law as the primary basis of their criminal justice systems, they have adopted fundamentally different approaches to reform. Indonesia has pursued comprehensive criminal law reconstruction through recodification, incorporating the recognition of living law, an expanded framework for corporate criminal liability, and a double-track sentencing system combining criminal punishment with corrective measures. In contrast, Malaysia has retained the Penal Code as the foundation of its criminal law, relying on incremental legislative amendments and judicial interpretation characteristic of the common law tradition. The comparison demonstrates that contemporary criminal law reform is shaped not only by colonial legal legacies but also by each country's legal tradition, constitutional values, and legislative policy. These findings contribute to comparative criminal law scholarship by illustrating how neighbouring jurisdictions with similar historical foundations may pursue different institutional and doctrinal pathways toward achieving legal certainty, justice, and the protection of society.

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