NSW Bail Laws: Law Reform and Politics Collide

The response to the Law Reform Commission's recommendations in the review of the Bail Act 1978 (NSW) has been mixed with the Government being criticised for ignoring that ''It is a package of measures that are all linked to each other and the government has just gone through and cherry-picked a couple of issues it thinks it can politically get away with, and it has ignored the rest."

In an article reported in the Sydney Morning Herald yesterday, the reaction of lawyers across New South Wales has been documented in relation to the increasing complexity of bail law in NSW.

The original report had among its many recommendations, the following:

• The presumption that all people should get bail

• Framing bail legislation in response to the criminal justice system objectives

• Special conditions for vulnerable prisoners

• Other options rather than remand for monitoring dangerous offenders

This report was finally made into law in the Bail Amendment (Enforcement Conditions) Act 2012 (No. 87) (NSW) but this has done little to improve the complexity of bail laws, which, as stated in the article, has been the aim of the Attorney General of NSW.

Attorney-General Smith's main game has been to end the law and order auction - a bidding war between political parties over which could produce the toughest jail penalties and simplify the state's complex bail laws which had become a ''patchwork quilt'' after 20 years of changes. He also wanted to make it easier for vulnerable community members, such as children and people with mental illness, to stay out of jail.

However, what he has achieved, due to the resistance of the current Cabinet has been introducing laws which allow violent offenders who show no signs of rehabilitation to be kept in prison indefinitely; removing an accused's right to silence in any police inquiry, and introducingw laws to outlaw biker gangs and on consorting with criminals.

Not long after the O'Farrell government's election in 2011, Smith also introduced mandatory life sentences for killing a police officer, despite having previously decried mandatory sentencing as something that was only promoted by ''rednecks''.

Stephen Blanks, secretary for the NSW Council for Civil Liberties, said he was most concerned about the laws against consorting and the abolition of the right to silence. ''The concerns are they fail to achieve any legitimate purpose and have an impact on the way police deal with people. We have seen police pick on teenagers and indigenous people."

To read more about the types of laws introduced, click here.

TimeBase Crimes Point-in Time Legislation is the most accurate and reliable method of quickly and efficiently searching for legislation at the date of the offence.