The Andrews Government won’t meet Closing The Gap justice targets if it refuses to reform punitive bail laws
The Andrews Government must urgently reform its punitive bail laws if it is to meet the justice targets it signed on to in the new Closing the Gap Agreement last year.
The first Annual Data Compilation Report mapping progress under the National Agreement on Closing the Gap was released today by the Productivity Commission, providing a point-in-time snapshot of measurement under the National Agreement on Closing the Gap. Australia is not on track to meet the already unambitious targets relating to incarceration of Aboriginal people.
This month we mark four years since the Andrews Government created new bail laws which have seen a surge in the prison population. The impact has been particularly devastating for Aboriginal women, who have become the fastest growing group to be imprisoned in Victoria – nearly 6 in 10 are on remand, having been convicted of nothing. Many are imprisoned on remand for minor breaches of bail conditions and low level offences such as non-payment of fines, shoplifting and possession of small quantities of marijuana. These types of offences don’t result in a prison term.
In Victoria, 1752.8 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander adults per 100,000 are imprisoned, compared to 124.6 non-Indigenous adults. In Victoria, 15.3 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children per 10,000 are imprisoned, compared to 1.7 non-Indigenous children.
While there was a decrease in 2020 due to the pandemic, the long-term trend of rapidly increasing incarceration of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people will resume if the Andrews Government’s bail laws are not reformed urgently. Between 2016 and 2019 the rate of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander adults in prison in Victoria increased by 60%.
The Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody recommended increasing access to bail. The Andrews Government has done the reverse, and made bail much harder to access.
The Andrews Government could address this mass-imprisonment crisis today by:
Repealing the reverse-onus provisions in the bail laws;
Creating a presumption in favour of bail for all offences, with the onus on the prosecution to demonstrate that bail should not be granted due to there being a specific and immediate risk to the physical safety of another person or the person posing a demonstrable flight risk; and
Repealing the offences of committing an indictable offence while on bail, breaching bail conditions and failure to answer bail.
The Victorian Aboriginal Legal Service sent an open letter (signed by 55 organisations) to Ministers Symes, Hutchins and Williams during Reconciliation Week and, subsequently, an expert petition (signed by over 250 experts) calling for urgent bail reform. We are still waiting for an answer.
Quotes Attributable to George Selvanera, CEO of Victorian Aboriginal Legal Service
“The Government often notes that the massive explosion of people in custody is an unintended consequence of bail laws changed in response to the horrific Bourke Street massacre. However, those consequences are, by now, well-known. A Government decision to continue business as usual is a deliberate and cruel choice to traumatise Aboriginal women and other more vulnerable people and their families through unnecessary, costly remand and to neglect its commitments under the Closing the Gap Agreement.”
Meena Singh, Legal Director, Human Rights Law Centre:
“Victoria has some of Australia’s most dangerous bail laws that are needlessly removing Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women from their families. These punitive laws are funnelling women into prisons to be warehoused on remand before they have been sentenced for a crime. Time is overdue for the Andrews government to fix Victoria’s broken bail laws.”
Media Contacts:
Patrick Cook, VALS: pcook@vals.org.au, 0417 003 910
Evan Schuurman, Human Rights Law Centre: evan.schuurman@hrlc.org.au, 0406 117 937