Bail or Jail? The Practical Operation of the Bail Act 1976

Recent changes to the law relating to bail have increased the power of criminal justice agencies to arrest and monitor defendants granted bail by the police or the courts, refuse the grant of bail, and appeal against a magistrates' decision to grant bail. These measures provide overwhelming evidence of the erosion of rights of suspects and defendants in the remand process who are, in theory at least, innocent until proven guilty. They were introduced to redress the perceived imbalance between the powers of the prosecution and the rights of defendants. However, evidence from a research project carried out into the practical operation of the remand process suggests that the remand process already favoured the prosecution and that many of the rights afforded to defendants were not utilized in practice. As a result, the changes in the law were unnecessary and will result in an increase in unnecessary custodial remands. One of the major law and order debates during the 1990s concerned the issue of offending on bail. This debate was spearheaded by the police, backed up by their own research findings.1 They argued that defendants were routinely abusing bail and they and the courts lacked the power to prevent this occurring. This argument followed a similar line to those relating to other areas of the criminal justice process which centred around the contention that the balance of the process had moved too far in favour of the accused. In other words, the rights of suspects and defendants had become so strong that factually guilty people were able to abuse the system and evade prosecution and conviction. One of the hallmarks of these debates was the use of specific atypical cases to illustrate the ability of accused persons to abuse the system, for example, the case in Gloucester of a man released on bail on a charge of rape who murdered a women while awaiting trial on the first charge. The arguments presented by the police were strengthened by extensive media coverage which brought this issue into the public eye and created a moral panic about persistent offenders who