Inside Victoria’s tougher criminal justice system

In the year to March 2026, aggravated burglary was down 22 per cent, aggravated and non-aggravated robbery down 15 per cent, crime committed by young men declined by a drop of nearly nine per cent, and the overall recorded victimisation rate has decreased.

In that same time, bail revocations were up nearly 50 per cent and bail refusals have increased by over 60 per cent, due in part to the expansion of custody courts within the state’s local court division.

Earlier this month, Allen’s government announced it had funded the expansion of remote custody courts (RCCs) to the Geelong, Broadmeadows, Dandenong and Ringwood Magistrates’ Courts. An additional bail and remand court (BaRC) was added in Melbourne.

At the time, Attorney-General Sonya Kilkenny said: “Victorians expect community safety to come first – that’s exactly what we’re delivering. Our tougher bail laws are working and we’re backing our courts with more resources to make sure offenders are held to account sooner.”

Over a week, Lawyers Weekly observed the “tough on crime” agenda in regional Victorian courtrooms in person and the new RCCs. Over that time, there were several instances of administrative errors that restricted the court’s ability to make decisions under the legislation, strict timelines enforced by the expiration of custody links, and extensive consideration of the high bail thresholds.

Due to an administrative error and strict confinements under the Bail Act 1977, a pregnant accused was told she had another week to wait before her application could be decided. Under section 18AK, an accused person must give formal notice of a further bail application or variation to the prosecutor at least three days before the hearing.

VIEW ALL

The court is able to dispense with the notice under certain conditions. However, noting the informant was unavailable and the summary was “lacking in quite significant particulars”, the magistrate was not satisfied the court would be able to determine the matter adequately.

“I am satisfied it is common ground that, due to an administrative error, section 18AK of the Bail Act has not been complied with. I’m not suggesting that anyone is at fault, these things happen, but it is a provision that requires strict compliance,” she said.

Before another magistrate, a man was sentenced for lighting a fire near gas bottles at a 7-Eleven, just a day after he was released on bail for separate offending. His defence lawyer argued for a straight jail sentence rather than a sentence and a community corrections order, arguing that the latter would be “setting him up to fail”.

In making these submissions, the lawyer said his client would be able to access rehabilitation and comprehensive home living support services with the NDIS following his sentencing. When told by the magistrate that this service should be set up prior to his release – as is usually the case with a CCO – the lawyer said it was a “catch-22 because the release date is required to expedite these applications”.

“You’re just inviting this court to sentence him to a straight term of imprisonment and leave any rehabilitation, psychiatric support, social support and those matters to those who he may be linked with in future, which is exactly what happened last time, isn’t it?”

The court was told the accused man was being supported by residential, health and social services within the prison.

In sentencing the man to the straight jail term of 11 months and seven days, the magistrate said the services “need to be properly orchestrated” on his next release. The magistrate added: “I have no doubt the community will be best served, and you best served, if upon your release you receive all those supports.”

During the time I reported from criminal courtrooms for a different publication, I observed conversations between lawyers and their clients about the personalities and decision-making trends of the magistrates. Some were known for their tough, no-nonsense approach (for instance, I watched as one sentenced a man to a night in a cell for a failure to comply with court orders), but there were others who were widely considered to have a “soft touch” to sentencing.

In the hours I spent in the courtroom of one such magistrate this month, that soft touch appeared to have hardened. While his attitude seemed to be wholly different from those earlier years, the magistrate maintained the highest level of professionalism, even in the face of contempt allegations and persistent mutterings from accused men.

Most of the matters that came on before him were family and domestic violence related, including a sentencing indication for a man accused of following his former partner and sending text messages to a child in contravention of a protection order.

According to Crime Statistics Agency Victoria, approximately 20 per cent of offences are family-related. Of those, 34 per cent fell under ‘a crime against the person’ category, including homicide, assault, sexual-related offences, blackmail and extortion, and stalking.

Reflecting those statistics, the magistrate said the maximum penalties is jail, “and the community expects court orders are enforced, particularly when it is a family violence intervention order”.

“I don’t believe you understand the difference between right and wrong, between what court orders are … and you would have been given directions that any breach would have resulted in fines and jail.

“I don’t know the impact on the victim but I would think it would be significant given the length of separation, the fact you had treatment throughout all of this and the recent offending is in March this year, which is really troubling,” the magistrate said in giving a sentencing indication of a community corrections order.

The RCC also dealt with a man who was bailed on serious domestic violence offending – including recklessly causing injury and persistent contraventions of a family violence order – only to go on and repeat many of these offences. In addition to having his bail revoked and being remanded into custody, the next bail application had to address the “hardest category” under the Bail Act 1977.

The magistrate of this court explained: “The parliament has determined that you fall into the heaviest category – or the hardest category – to establish bail and that is you must show exceptional circumstances. Even if you do establish there are exceptional circumstances, bail must still be refused if there is unacceptable risk.”

In his fresh bail application, the accused’s mum gave evidence she would provide a residential address and would inform police if his bail conditions were breached. However, she also openly conceded the accused was “a grown man, [and] at this age I can’t control him”.

The affected family member provided a statement of no complaint, but prosecutors submitted this should be “given little weight”. Police had partial statements that reveal “pretty concerning” damage to the woman and her property, along with photographic evidence. The man was also living at his parent’s house at the time of offending.

The exceptional circumstances threshold was not met.

In delivering this decision, the magistrate addressed a submission from the defence that an affected family member giving a statement of no complaint was “unusual” in these offence types.

“Regrettably, there is nothing particularly exceptional about that, it is routinely the case that the AFM does not wish to proceed with the prosecution. Whether or not the prosecution proceeds and/or is successful is an entirely different matter,” she said.

The tough on crime agenda has not been without its criticisms, especially for their impact on First Nations people. In Australia, First Nations people account for 37 per cent of all prisoners; in Victoria, they make up about 13.5 per cent of the prison population.

Delivering a speech at the 2025 Australian Legal Convention, Supreme Court of Queensland’s Justice Lincoln Crowle said state governments have sought to “outdo each other and toughen crime” without considering their impact on First Nations people.

When the Bail Further Amendment Bill 2025 was introduced last year, the Victorian Aboriginal Legal Service (VALS) – together with over 100 representatives of Aboriginal community controlled organisations – called for the Victorian government to implement fair bail laws.

“As a collective voice, we strongly condemn the suite of knee-jerk bail law changes introduced by the Allan Labor government in March. We know they lead to greater criminalisation of Aboriginal communities and other marginalised communities,” VALS said at the time.

There has also been strong condemnation of the “adult time for adult crime” legislation, which makes it possible for a Victorian courtroom to sentence children as young as 14 to a life behind bars for crimes such as aggravated home invasion, carjacking and robbery.

Australian Lawyers Alliance (ALA) criminal justice spokesperson Greg Barns SC told Lawyers Weekly late last year that all research demonstrates that jailing children – and particularly for lengthy periods of time – only serves to increase recidivism.

Nerita Waight, CEO of VALS and an elected member of the First Peoples’ Assembly, said none of the legislative reforms were founded in evidence, community safety or fundamental human rights.

“This is not about kids being held accountable for their actions, this is about locking away a cohort of young people who they have determined to be ‘the problem’, who the government have lost hope for in terms of rehabilitation,” Waight told Lawyers Weekly.

A 16-year-old girl became the first Victorian child to face the County Court of Victoria under the “adult time adult crime” legislation, but the courtroom was in a state of confusion over whether the judge should wear a robe, whether youth sentencing reports should play a role, and the appropriate legislation she should be tried under.

Joseph Stephenson, co-founder and director of EAS Legal, said these teething issues have shown the reforms have failed to consider the perspectives of those from the “boots on the ground level”.

“No one really knows how it’s operating, be it from the bench or solicitors, [and] it's all a bit of trial and error at the moment in terms of how this whole framework is going to work. I definitely think there could have been more consultation with the industry in terms of what the intention behind the legislation is and how it’s going to work practically, because there is a bit of a grey area at the moment,” he said.