But it gets worse.

The plan also appears to include a Hunger Games-style survival competition, with guards sending out food parcels to a crocodile-surrounded island, but otherwise leaving death row inmates to fend for themselves.

"We will keep sending them food supplies every day. But they have to survive on their own," the chief of Indonesia's anti-drug agency, Budi Waseso, was quoted as saying.

Mr Waseso told Indonesian news website Tempo: "We will place as many crocodiles as we can there. I will search for the most ferocious type of crocodile. You can't bribe crocodiles. You can't convince them to let inmates escape."

Australians Myuran Sukumaran and Andrew Chan were executed by firing squad together with six other drug-related convicts on the Indonesian island of Nusa Kambangan, on 29 April 2015.

The executions led to to the withdrawal of Australia's ambassador to Indonesia, and the then prime minister Tony Abbott described the killings as "cruel and unnecessary".

Sukumaran and Chan were two of the Bali Nine, a group of Australians convicted for trying to smuggle 8.3 kilograms of heroin out of the Indonesian island of Bali.

Indonesia already has some of the world's harshest drug trafficking laws, though Mr Waseso's extreme proposal would take that reputation far further.

It has yet to receive approval from Indonesia's Justice Ministry, though Mr Waseso's public statements would appear to suggest some support for the plan exists. Mr Waseso said he had not yet selected a suitable island site for the crocodile-guarded prison.

The mooted island hellhole would be populated only by convicted drug traffickers, to prevent them mingling with other prisoners, according to a statement from anti-drugs agency spokesman Slamet Pribadi.

​Authorities were mulling the plan to build "a special prison for death row convicts", he was quoted as saying in The Straits Times. The agency is currently in discussions with the justice ministry about the plan, he said.

Fairfax Media