INDIGENOUS SOCIAL JUSTICE ASSOCIATION | MELBOURNE

No crime, no time

Bail Law reform is needed NOW

Remove the reverse onus of proof in the Victorian Bail Act

In 2022, the Indigenous Social Justice Association (ISJA) – Melbourne launched the No crime, No Time — Fix Victoria’s bail laws now campaign. In Victoria, prisons are overcrowded with poor people who have not had their day in court because Victoria has the harshest bail laws in the country.

On 30 January 2023, the Victorian Coroner released his findings into the entirely preventable death of 37-year-old Gunditjamara, Dja Dja Wurrung, Wiradjuri and Yorta Yorta woman, Veronica Marie Nelson. She died in 2020 in the Dame Phyllis Frost women’s prison where her treatment, according to the coroner, was “cruel and degrading.” He called Victoria’s bail laws a “complete and unmitigated disaster” and recommended root and branch changes. We completely agree.

It is a racist and sexist tragedy that another family is grieving as a result of an entirely preventable death in custody.

In 1991, the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody (RCIADIC) released 339
recommendations, amongst them the demand that imprisonment must be the last resort. Governments have had more than three decades to implement these recommendations! Instead, they pander to the law-and-order lobby — including the Police Association — by implementing changes such as the 2018 bail laws. This change, and others like it, make things even worse.

We should not have had to wait for entirely preventable deaths in custody for change to even be considered! It took the death of Yorta Yorta grandmother, Tanya Day, and a massive campaign spearheaded by her family, to spark action to reform laws around public drunkenness.

Ms Nelson would also still be with us today if the recommendations of the RCIADIC had been implemented in full.

The day after the coroner’s findings shone the spotlight on a system which comprehensively failed Ms Nelson, Premier Daniel Andrews fronted the media claiming the death would “drive reform.” This is the same Premier who did not even acknowledge the petition demanding changes to the state’s bail laws submitted by ISJA-Melbourne in the lead up to the November 2022 state election.

The task now for all who want to permanently end deaths in custody is to make sure that sweeping change occurs. This is essential to keep unsentenced people out of prison.
There is a real risk that the promised reform may be little more than tinkering around the edges of a completely broken system. Without an immediate ground swell of support for fundamental change, the type of real reform that is required may not happen.

Needed now

  • Get unsentenced people who are on remand out of Victorian prisons;
  • Remove the reverse-onus provisions in the Bail Act and create a presumption in favour of bail, placing the onus on the prosecution to demonstrate why bail should not be granted.

It is also crucial that all 339 recommendations of the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody be implement in full. This includes the suite of recommendations, including recommendation 92, that governments should legislate to enforce the principle that imprisonment should be utilised only as a sanction of last resort.

Inform yourself

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