Necropolitics and state-sponsored drug violence: the death penalty for drug offences in Indonesia

BACKGROUND: Much of the literature on drug-related violence focuses on the Americas, its applicability to other regions of the world unobvious (Liem and Moeller, 2025). Focusing on the death penalty for drug offences in Indonesia - with findings generalisable to other Southeast Asian jurisdictions - we find that, while contemporary theories focus on the violence within drug markets, here the violence is unidirectional: from the state to civilians. METHODS: We apply a necropolitical theoretical framework (Mbembe, 2003) to data from interviews and focus groups with high level judges (8 participants), prosecutors (32), narcotics police (8) and other police officers (6) in Jakarta, Indonesia from 2023 to 2024. RESULTS: Our data reveal three key features of the necropolitical theoretical framework: 1). State of exception and siege: our participants harnessed the language of a 'drugs emergency' in Indonesia, with concerns about invasion, a foreign 'insurgency' of drugs, justifying the most punitive criminal justice response. 2). Annihilation for preservation: judicial and extrajudicial executions of drug traffickers are justified for the protection of current and future generations from the scourge of drugs. 3). Racism in post-colonial practice: executions for drug offences have been disproportionately directed at foreign nationals. CONCLUSION: This paper invites the reader to zoom out from the typical focus on violence within the drug trade to consider punishment - judicial and extrajudicial - as a form of state-sponsored, necropolitical violence, part of the continuum of 'drug-related violence' rather than simply a matter of penal policy.