Victoria’s bail laws have made it much harder for those charged with an offence to show why they should be released on bail, resulting in more and more prisoners, particularly women experiencing poverty and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women, being denied bail.

Previously, a two-step process, including a reverse onus test, applied for the most serious offences, such as murder. However, within the current system, repeat, low-level wrongdoing can be held to the same standard as more violent and dangerous crimes.

Megan Pearce, managing lawyer, social action and public interest law at Fitzroy Legal Service, said the current bail laws are just “not working”.

“Every day we see our clients remanded for low-level offending connected to the health issue of drug dependence, homelessness, poverty and failures in our family violence system,” she said.

“And because of the bail laws, many people – young people, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and women in particular – are spending time in custody for charges that don’t warrant a term of imprisonment. It is not fair. It is not making us safer.”

Data from 2019 shows that of the women remanded at the time, the most common alleged crimes were property, drug and burglary offences – not violent crimes. A report by the NSW Law Reform Commission also showed that many people who are detained prior to their trial will be found not guilty or will be given a non-custodial sentence.

Victorian Aboriginal Legal Service chief executive Nerita Waight said that Aboriginal women and children in particular are suffering as a result of the bail laws.  

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“It was reported over the weekend that Aboriginal women are imprisoned at 20 times the rate of non-Aboriginal women. That figure is a disgrace and utterly heartbreaking,” she said.

“When you take into account the fact that many imprisoned women are mothers and also primary carers, it becomes evident that the Andrews Government’s bail laws are at odds with two of its commitments under the Closing The Gap Agreement – reducing the over incarceration of Aboriginal people and reducing the overrepresentation of Aboriginal children being removed from their families.

“It is indisputable that these laws, that increase remand rates, harm women, many of whom are victim-survivors of family violence. But they also impact on the principle of respect for family life, under the Convention on the Rights of the Child.”

Legal director at the Human Rights Law Centre, Meena Singh, said that Premier Dan Andrews must repeal provisions in the bail laws and rescind the reverse onus rules once and for all.

“Victoria has some of Australia’s most onerous and dangerous bail laws, which regularly fail to uphold the most basic tenets of a fair and equal justice system. They are unfairly removing women from their families, and funnelling them into prisons to be warehoused on remand before they have been sentenced for a crime,” she said.

“The Andrews government must step up and fix Victoria’s broken bail laws to end the needless imprisonment of women.”