Professor Marilyn McMahon

Overall, in Australia, there's about 41% of prisoners who are being held on remand.

And we've seen it in states not only like Victoria, New South Wales, South Australia.

What's been driving it over a period of at least a decade now is concern about community safety.

So whereas, say, 20 years ago, you had only a small fraction of the prison population being those people who are being held on remand, today, in some states, like the ACT, for example, half the prison population is comprised of people being held on remand.

In South Australia, the Northern Territory, and New South Wales, it's about 45% of the prison population.

After the break, how media panic has influenced bail laws.

Marilyn, you mentioned that these tougher bail laws we're seeing in Australia have been influenced by media and political narratives around crime and a growing concern with community safety.

So tell me about the pressures and narratives that have influenced the introduction of these bail laws.

Well, I think in Victoria we've seen there's been a recent increase in the crime rate and that has generated considerable concern.

We've seen also that police have agitated in relation to young offenders and they've asked for harsher bail laws to deal with them.

And we've also seen the Premier introducing the notion of a review of bail laws just prior to the Werribee by-election.

Then the Herald Sun joined in and you've got Channel 9 News, which is also promoting fear of crime being committed by people who are on bail.

That's a powerful conjunction of circumstances that favours the introduction of punitive bail laws.

And this is not the first time that media attention has driven a tightening of bail laws in Australia, is it?

No, you saw exactly the same thing.

From about 2012 to 2015, you had a couple of very high-profile offences being committed in Victoria.

Adrian Bailey, who killed Jill Maher, Sean Price, who killed Massa Nikotic, and then you had James Gargazoulis, who was responsible for the Bourke Street killings.

Those high profile crimes generated, again, enormous media concern.

And that media concern drove the Coghlan inquiry, which in 2017, 2018, generated very harsh bail laws in Victoria.

So again, what you see is high profile, but unrepresentative crimes driving law reform