One of the aim of postmodern thought is to make that science useful for the best shake of the society. So that criminology. The application of cultural studies in criminology as a part of the postmodern thought, i.e. cultural criminology, has widen the criminological perspective  in defining the boundary of the ontology of crime and enable criminology to be used to solve crime problems without resulting other problems.  The structure of thought brought about by cultural criminology lead to the appropriate understanding of cultural relativism. In this sense, there should be no single culture that could claim to be the most civilized one, and then to underestimate others. The postmodern thought is also argue that they should not a hegemony of scientific validity, that mainly claimed by positivistic approach. Scientific validity, according to postmodern thought, is not a single one but many. Ferrell, Hayward, and Young define cultural criminology concepts as: "that cultural dynamics carry within them the meaning of crime." . . . Cultural criminology understands 'culture' to be stuff of collective meaning and identity; within it and by way of it, the government claims authority, the consumer considers brands of bread -- and 'the criminal', as both person and perception, comes alive (Ferrell, Hayward, Young, 2008: 2).  The "cultural criminology's principle assumptions: that crime and deviance constitute more than the simple enactment of a static group culture (Ferrell, Hayward, Young, 2008: 3).

For Indonesia, as one of a multicultural country, in which the country consist of hundreds of diverse ethnic groups. In a such cultural diversity, cultural criminology has a favorable arena for the application of the theoretical thought. However promoting the theoretical perspective of the cultural criminology in Indonesia is not an easy task.

It has been known in Indonesia, especially by Indonesian legal scholars as well as the social scientists, that van Vollenhaven (1910) had identified 19 adat (customary) law areas, in which each areas has an independent adat court. This reality never been taken into consideration in analyzing Indonesian cultures.   Most of the scientific ideas in social sciences and the legal science in Indonesia,  uncritically simply rely on the western thought. And it has lasted for long period of times.  As a result, not only that the theoretical thought highly affected by western thought, the public policy are also dominated by the positivistic approach. In these sense, most of the public policy was developed under the  assumption that Indonesia is a homogeneous type of society, so that a general policy is believed can be applied any were and everywhere. One of the notorious policy is the nullification of the legitimacy of adat courts in 1951 for the purpose to reconstruct and develop national civil court system, by the enactment of Law Number 1/1951.  The positivistic approach itself,  according to Michalowski, may be functional only in a homogeneous type of community in which  the law (national/state level) constitute as the collective will of the society (Michalowski, 1977).

This paper will take cultural criminology ideas as a basis in discussing critically some of its opportunities and obstacles for the application in controlling crime problems in Indonesia.