Authored By: JUL RAHMANIAR
Graduated from Faculty of Law Universitas Halu Oleo
Abstract
Road traffic accidents involving roaming livestock represent an underexamined intersection between public safety, criminal responsibility, and rural livelihoods. This article examines the negligence of livestock owners whose animals enter public roads and contribute to traffic accidents in Central Buton Regency, Indonesia. Drawing on empirical legal research based on interviews with law-enforcement officials, livestock authorities, owners, and community members, supported by legal and documentary materials, the article argues that roaming livestock should not be understood merely as an individual failure of supervision. The problem is produced by the interaction of weak legal awareness, economic incentives, entrenched open-grazing practices, difficulties in identifying owners, underreporting of accidents, and limited institutional capacity to enforce local rules. Social Control Theory helps explain the weak internalisation of responsibility and the limited effectiveness of community and institutional restraints. Rational Choice Theory, meanwhile, illuminates why open grazing may be perceived as economically efficient while the expected costs of non-compliance remain low. The article further argues that enforcement focused solely on punishment is unlikely to be sustainable. A more effective strategy requires credible and proportionate enforcement combined with livestock registration, identification, collective or semi-intensive husbandry, designated grazing areas, temporary holding facilities, and adequate operational resources. Central Buton therefore illustrates a broader lesson for rural road safety: where harmful practices are sustained by both social norms and economic rationality, legal compliance must be made institutionally credible and practically achievable.
Keywords: Criminology; Livestock Negligence; Road Safety; Social Control; Rational Choice; Central Buton.
Introduction
Road safety is commonly associated with the conduct of drivers, the condition of vehicles, and the quality of road infrastructure. In rural areas, however, another recurring source of danger is the presence of livestock on public roads. When cattle, goats, or other animals are left to roam without effective supervision, the resulting risk is not simply an unfortunate accident involving an animal and a vehicle. It raises a question of responsibility: when does a livestock owner’s failure to restrain or supervise an animal become a legally and criminologically significant form of negligence?
This question is particularly important in Central Buton Regency, where livestock remains closely connected to household livelihoods and traditional patterns of animal husbandry. The empirical material underlying this article records accidents involving livestock between 2023 and 2025, including incidents resulting in minor injuries, serious injuries, and deaths. At the same time, official police records do not necessarily capture the full scale of the problem because some victims do not report accidents and others cannot satisfy the administrative requirements associated with formal reporting. The discrepancy between lived experience and official records is therefore itself part of the enforcement problem.
The legal framework already recognises the danger created when animals interfere with road safety. Indonesian criminal law also recognises liability for negligent conduct causing death or serious injury, while Central Buton Regency has adopted Regional Regulation No. 2 of 2024 concerning the Control of Livestock. The persistence of roaming livestock despite these rules suggests that the central issue is not the absence of law but the relationship between legal norms, social practices, economic realities, and enforcement capacity.
This article advances the argument that livestock-related traffic accidents in Central Buton should be analysed as a problem of criminological governance rather than solely as isolated failures by individual owners. Using Social Control Theory and Rational Choice Theory, it examines why owners continue to permit or tolerate roaming livestock and why existing legal controls have not yet produced consistent compliance. It then considers how a combination of enforcement and practical socio-economic interventions can reduce road risks without ignoring the livelihood conditions that sustain open grazing.
Method and Analytical Framework
The article is based on the empirical legal research contained in the underlying study. Primary information was obtained through field interviews with traffic police personnel, municipal public-order officials, livestock authorities, livestock owners, and members of the community, while secondary materials included legislation and relevant legal literature. The research treated law not only as written rules but also as a social institution whose effectiveness depends on how it operates in the community.
Two criminological perspectives structure the analysis. First, Social Control Theory directs attention to the bonds, commitments, and normative restraints that discourage conduct harmful to others. Where owners do not internalise a responsibility to keep livestock away from public roads, and where community or institutional responses are weak, the restraints against non-compliance become limited. Secondly, Rational Choice Theory highlights the role of perceived costs and benefits. Open grazing can reduce the time, labour, land, and feeding costs associated with intensive animal husbandry. If the probability of meaningful enforcement is low, the immediate economic benefit of allowing livestock to roam may outweigh the expected legal cost.
These theories are complementary. Social Control Theory explains why legal and social obligations may fail to shape behaviour, whereas Rational Choice Theory explains why the same behaviour may persist because it remains economically advantageous. Together, they show why simply increasing the severity of legal rules may have little effect when enforcement is uncertain and lawful alternatives are difficult or expensive.
III. From Roaming Livestock to Road Risk
The field findings demonstrate that the presence of livestock on roads is not an abstract concern. Community interviews identified multiple accidents during the 2023–2025 period. The reported incidents varied in severity, ranging from minor injuries to serious injury and fatal outcomes. The underlying research also noted that interview-based figures were limited to particular communities and could not be treated as a complete statistical account of all accidents in the regency. Nevertheless, the recurring accounts are significant because they reveal a continuing risk that is only partially visible in formal data.
The problem is aggravated by underreporting. According to the police information collected in the study, some accident victims do not make formal reports, while others encounter documentation-related barriers. Consequently, the official record may underestimate the practical frequency of livestock-related accidents. This gap matters for legal policy because institutions allocate attention and resources partly on the basis of recorded incidents. If harmful events remain outside official statistics, the problem can appear less urgent than it actually is.
Roaming livestock also creates evidentiary difficulties. When an animal causes or contributes to an accident, identifying its owner may be difficult, particularly where livestock are not adequately registered or marked. Owners may also deny ownership when an accident creates a prospect of compensation or legal consequences. Such conduct complicates the establishment of responsibility and weakens deterrence. A regulatory system that cannot reliably connect an animal to a responsible owner leaves a crucial gap between the existence of a legal obligation and its practical enforcement.
Why Owners Continue to Allow Livestock to Roam
Weak Legal Awareness and Social Control
One explanation identified in the research is low legal awareness. The problem, however, is deeper than a simple lack of information. Owners may know that livestock on roads can create danger yet continue the practice because the norm of responsible confinement has not been sufficiently internalised or consistently reinforced. Social Control Theory is useful here: compliance is more likely when individuals feel committed to social obligations and believe that their conduct is subject to meaningful community and institutional restraint.
In Central Buton, the continued acceptance of roaming livestock indicates that informal practices can compete with formal legal expectations. Where animals have traditionally been allowed to graze openly, the conduct may be viewed as ordinary rather than as a serious threat to public safety. The normalisation of the practice reduces social disapproval and makes formal legal rules appear external to everyday economic life. In this environment, socialisation alone may be insufficient unless it is accompanied by visible and consistent enforcement.
The difficulty of establishing ownership after an accident further illustrates the weakness of social control. The underlying study found a pattern in which the economic value of an animal could encourage an owner to assert ownership when the animal was lost, while the prospect of compensation or legal consequences could create an incentive to deny ownership after an accident. This selective relationship with responsibility undermines both accountability and collective trust.
Economic Rationality and the Cost of Compliance
The decision to allow livestock to roam also has an economic dimension. Interviews with livestock authorities and owners indicated that local geographic and economic conditions make conventional agriculture uncertain in some areas. Dry and rocky land, uneven access to water and irrigation, seasonal dependence, and the costs of agricultural production can make livestock an important and comparatively practical source of livelihood.
At the same time, intensive confinement requires land, feed, labour, and infrastructure. Open grazing can therefore function as a cost-saving strategy. From a Rational Choice perspective, the owner may not consciously calculate legal doctrine, but the behaviour can still reflect a practical assessment: allowing animals to roam reduces immediate maintenance costs, while the probability of inspection, impoundment, compensation, or prosecution may be perceived as low.
This does not excuse negligence. Rather, it explains why a purely moral or punitive response may fail. If the legal system requires a behaviour that is economically difficult to perform while failing to create accessible alternatives, non-compliance can remain rational from the individual’s perspective. Effective regulation must therefore alter both sides of the calculation: it must increase the credibility of enforcement while reducing the practical barriers to safer livestock management.
Institutional Constraints and Weak Deterrence
The research also identifies institutional limitations. The enforcement of Regional Regulation No. 2 of 2024 has been constrained by limited budgets, infrastructure, operational resources, and difficulties in socialising the regulation across the regency. These limitations matter because deterrence depends not merely on the existence of sanctions but on the realistic expectation that violations will be detected and addressed.
When enforcement is sporadic, the message received by potential violators may be that compliance is optional. This is especially problematic where the harmful conduct is recurrent and visible. A law that formally prohibits or regulates roaming livestock but lacks adequate personnel, transport, holding facilities, identification systems, and operational funding risks becoming symbolically strong but practically weak.
The result is a self-reinforcing cycle. Weak enforcement permits the continuation of open grazing; continued open grazing normalises the practice; normalisation makes reporting and accountability more difficult; and incomplete reporting produces an official picture that may not justify increased enforcement resources. Breaking this cycle requires interventions directed at information, identification, enforcement, and the economic conditions of compliance.
The Limits of a Punishment-Only Approach
The legal framework provides a basis for responsibility where negligent conduct causes legally relevant harm. Yet criminal or administrative punishment should not be treated as the sole solution. A punishment-only strategy encounters at least three difficulties. First, accidents may involve multiple contributing causes, including the conduct of the driver, road conditions, visibility, and the presence of the animal. Responsibility should therefore be determined through careful causation analysis rather than automatically attributed to the owner. Secondly, identifying ownership may be difficult without an effective registration or marking system. Thirdly, criminal sanctions imposed without realistic husbandry alternatives may generate resistance without producing durable behavioural change.
A more effective approach is one that combines certainty, proportionality, and practicality. Certainty means that owners should reasonably expect violations to be detected and addressed. Proportionality requires that enforcement distinguish between ordinary regulatory violations, serious negligence, and conduct that contributes to grave injury or death. Practicality requires government to recognise that safer compliance may demand infrastructure and economic support, especially for households dependent on livestock.
This approach also better reflects the criminological analysis. Social Control Theory suggests strengthening the networks and institutions that reinforce responsible behaviour. Rational Choice Theory suggests changing the incentive structure so that lawful management becomes more attractive and violation becomes more costly. Neither objective can be achieved through legal texts alone.
Toward an Integrated Road-Safety and Livestock-Governance Strategy
The first priority should be an effective system of livestock registration and identification. Every animal should be linked, through an administratively feasible method, to a responsible owner. This would reduce disputes over ownership, assist enforcement officials, and make post-accident investigation more reliable. Registration should not exist merely on paper; it must be supported by accessible procedures and periodic updating.
Secondly, enforcement agencies require operational capacity. The underlying research points to the importance of regular control operations, temporary holding facilities, and adequate transportation for removing animals from roads. These measures would make enforcement visible and immediate while reducing the dependence on ad hoc responses after an accident has already occurred. Public notification and consistent procedures for retrieving impounded livestock could further strengthen accountability.
Thirdly, preventive measures should be linked to the physical geography of the risk. Warning signs may be useful in areas where livestock crossings are common, but signs cannot substitute for owner responsibility. More durable measures include designated grazing zones located away from major roads and community-based monitoring in areas with repeated incidents.
Fourthly, compliance should be made economically achievable. The research supports the development of collective livestock shelters, semi-intensive husbandry, affordable feed alternatives, and designated grazing land. Collective facilities can distribute infrastructure costs among groups of owners, while government assistance can reduce the immediate burden of shifting away from open grazing. Such measures should not be understood as rewards for non-compliance; they are preventive investments designed to remove the structural incentives that sustain risky conduct.
Finally, public education must move beyond the simple message that roaming livestock is prohibited. Socialisation should connect legal obligations with concrete accounts of road risk, victim harm, owner responsibility, and the practical consequences of accidents. Community leaders, village authorities, livestock groups, police, public-order agencies, and agricultural officials should deliver a coordinated message. The objective is to transform responsible livestock management from an externally imposed rule into a recognised community norm.
VII. Conclusion
Roaming livestock on public roads in Central Buton is a road-safety problem with a clear criminological dimension. The evidence from the underlying empirical research shows that owner negligence is shaped by low legal awareness, entrenched social practices, economic constraints, difficulties in identifying responsible owners, incomplete accident reporting, and limited enforcement capacity. The problem therefore cannot be adequately explained as a series of isolated individual mistakes.
Social Control Theory demonstrates the importance of weak normative bonds and insufficient community and institutional restraint. Rational Choice Theory explains why open grazing may continue when it offers immediate economic advantages and the expected consequences of non-compliance remain uncertain. Together, these perspectives support a central conclusion: the effectiveness of law depends on whether compliance is both socially reinforced and practically rational.
Central Buton should therefore pursue an integrated strategy. Credible enforcement, livestock registration, temporary holding facilities, and consistent sanctions should operate alongside collective shelters, designated grazing zones, accessible feed alternatives, and sustained public education. The objective is not simply to punish owners after accidents occur, but to create a governance system capable of preventing livestock from becoming predictable hazards on public roads. By combining accountability with realistic socio-economic interventions, local law can move from symbolic regulation toward a more durable form of rural road-safety protection.
Selected Sources and Legal Materials (OSCOLA Style)
Kitab Undang-Undang Hukum Pidana (Indonesia), arts 359–360.
Law No 22 of 2009 on Road Traffic and Transportation (Indonesia), art 229.
Central Buton Regency Regional Regulation No 2 of 2024 on the Control of Livestock.
Irwansyah, Penelitian Hukum: Pilihan Metode & Praktik Penulisan Artikel (revised edn, Mirra Buana Media 2024).
Noor Rohmat, Hukum Kriminologi dan Viktimologi (K-Media 2024).
Topo Santoso and Eva Achjani Zulfa, Kriminologi (PT Raja Grafindo Persada 2001).
James S Coleman, Dasar-Dasar Teori Sosial: Foundation of Social Theory (Nusa Media 2013).
Wirjono Prodjodikoro, Asas-Asas Hukum Pidana di Indonesia (PT Refika Aditama 2003).
Moeljatno, Asas-Asas Hukum Pidana (Rineka Cipta 2008).
Empirical interviews and field findings contained in Jul Rahmaniar, ‘Tinjauan Kriminologi terhadap Kelalaian Pemilik Ternak yang Mengakibatkan Kecelakaan Lalu Lintas di Kabupaten Buton Tengah’ (undergraduate thesis, Universitas Halu Oleo 2026).
