Thursday, 4 May 2023

Bail laws

Samantha RATNAM (Northern Metropolitan) (22:07): (188) My adjournment matter tonight is for the Attorney-General, and my ask is that she expedites comprehensive bail reform to reduce the over-representation of First Nations people in custody. This week we have once again heard important truths told through the Yoorrook Justice Commission’s hearings. Representatives from the Department of Justice and Community Safety acknowledged that their department and the government have completely failed to address the over-representation of First Nations people in the criminal justice system. The commission heard that since the landmark Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody in 1991, 23 Aboriginal people have died in Victorian prisons and 10 Aboriginal people have passed in police custody. Since 2020, five First Nations people have died in custody, a worrying increase in frequency.

It is not hard to link any increase in the number of preventable deaths in custody to government policy designed to increase the number of people in prison, like its 2017 and 2018 reforms to our bail laws. This week the department acknowledged as much, telling Yoorrook that the government’s bail reforms have had a disproportionate impact on First Nations people and, most concerningly, that the government must have known that this would be a likely outcome of its 2018 bail reforms. Eighty-nine per cent of Aboriginal people who were in prison in the last year were on remand, and over half were released without ever serving time under a sentence. The majority of these people are refused bail for minor offences which attract short prison sentences – again, a consequence of the 2018 bail reforms.

The government knew these reforms would result in a massive increase in the number of people in Victorian prisons, with the commission hearing that a brand new billion-dollar Western Plains correctional centre was built in order to meet expected demand from the government’s bail reforms. In an extraordinary admission at the Yoorrook hearings, the department also acknowledged that the government must have been aware that any change in policy or legislation that resulted in an increase in the prison population would also increase the number of First Nations people in prison and in turn increase the number of First Nations deaths in custody.

We have had 32 years to implement the recommendations of the royal commission report and reverse the over-representation of First Nations people in the justice system and the number of First Nations preventable deaths in custody, but instead of implementing the recommendations, such as that imprisonment can only be used as a last resort and that governments revise any criteria which inappropriately restricts the granting of bail to Aboriginal people, this government introduced bail policies that are deliberately designed to increase the number of people in prison. It has knowingly introduced measures that will actually increase the over-representation of First Nations people in the criminal justice system and in turn knowingly increase the risk that more First Nations people will die in prison. We urgently need to implement major bail reform to reduce the catastrophic overimprisonment of First Nations Victorians and prevent deaths in custody. I hope the government listens to the important truths coming out of the commission, and I ask that the Attorney expedite comprehensive bail reform to reduce the over-representation of First Nations people in custody.