The Process is the Punishment: The Case of Bail in New South Wales

Abstract

In the context of bail, punitive crime policies in NSW have led to a gradual erosion of the presumption in favour of bail, the conflation of bail conditions and penalty and a steady increase in the number of persons being held on remand. Continuing this punitive turn in crime police, the Bail Act 1978 was recently amended in respect of s22A. It is this amendment and the resultantant changes to the configuration of bail that is the subject of this article.