IS IT A GOOD OR BAD THING THAT BAIL WILL SOON GET HARDER? The old Bail Act 1978 was amended a whopping 85 times during its lifetime and came to be an unworkable bunch of rules and presumptions that often led to unfair outcomes. The new Bail Act 2013 sought to simplify the system with a two-step, risk-based approach to bail, whereby the bail authority would consider (1) whether the applicant poses an ‘unacceptable risk’ to the community, and if so (2) whether that risk can be overcome by bail conditions. But now, the Bail Amendment Act 2014 threatens to change all of that – inserting a ‘show cause’ requirement for certain offences and doing away with the existing two-step approach. While this might make certain radio hosts happy, it threatens to return us to the days where many were left scratching their heads about why certain (potentially dangerous) people were likely to get bail while other (non-dangerous) people were likely to be refused bail. And it looks certain to make it harder overall to achieve bail – which is likely to put even greater strain on our already-overcrowded prisons. Our latest blog post has more.
Posted on: Sun, 25 Jan 2015 04:11:04 +0000
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