Police stop and search powers to be expanded, new crackdown on ‘post and boast’ criminals

The proposed changes include a two-strike rule for someone accused of indictable offences, such as murder and rape, but also for shoplifting. A person accused of committing an indictable offence while on bail for another indictable offence would have to prove “compelling reasons” to remain on bail.

Safeguards to ensure the two-strike rule would be imposed proportionately were yet to be developed, and the government could not immediately say whether caveats would be spelled out in the bill before attempts to rush it through parliament next week.

Under Daniel Andrews, the Labor government overhauled the state’s bail laws in 2023 after the avoidable death in custody of Aboriginal woman Veronica Nelson. A coronial inquest found vulnerable people accused of low-level offences had been disproportionately jailed.

However, Allan conceded on Wednesday that the changed settings had failed to meet community expectations.

“We got it wrong, and I’m standing here as the premier today having listened to the Victorian community,” she said.

Allan rejected the notion that her government would have to stand up in the months ahead to apologise for unintended impacts from the “toughest bail laws in the country”.

She said the announcement, the third U-turn on bail in two years, was common sense.

Allan said there would be no extra funding for preventative programs but that the state had already invested in support services, and the corrections system would be resourced to cope with more people being remanded.

The premier has been under pressure on law and order as crime has been raised more often as an issue when Labor MPs have doorknocked in their communities.

Acting Chief Police Commissioner Rick Nugent backed the bail overhaul and said he was confident it would “break the culture of hardcore youth offending”.

“As a community, I think we are all open to people having second chances, especially kids,” Nugent said on Wednesday. “However, the time has come for a circuit breaker.”

The Victorian Aboriginal Legal Service condemned the “knee-jerk” change, saying it “repeated the mistakes of the past”. Chief executive Nerita Waight said the announcement risked the lives of vulnerable people without improving community safety.

“This government doesn’t learn from their mistakes. Rather, they go out of their way to repeat them,” she said.

“Locking people up should never be a measure of success. It is, in fact, an indication of failure.”

Loading

Victoria Legal Aid said the changes would harm those who needed the most support as a result of poverty, homelessness and trauma and was in direct conflict with the government’s commitment to truth-telling and a treaty with Indigenous people.

Police Association Victoria secretary Wayne Gatt said detractors were ideologues, not “ordinary people in the streets of Victoria who have been subjected to aggravated burglaries on repeat.

“It has been incredibly hard for our members to say that they’re making a difference when some of the most serious offenders in Victoria have seemingly been let go before their shift ends,” Gatt said.

“Our courts have to be a lot of things to a lot of people, but they can’t be victim factories. They cannot allow offenders to go out and do tomorrow what they did the day before.”

Labor will need the support of either the opposition or progressive crossbenchers to pass its agenda through the upper house.

Shadow attorney-general Michael O’Brien said the government had been dragged kicking and screaming, “slavishly following opinion polls” to the changes rather than having a genuine desire to be tough on crime.

The Victorian Greens also accused the “panicking premier” of being more interested in optics.

“Making it easier to put children in prison doesn’t improve community safety. It actually significantly increases the chance of a young person reoffending and results in First Nations children being disproportionately incarcerated,” Greens justice spokeswoman Katherine Copsey said.

Loading

Law Institute of Victoria co-chair Ben Watson said remand must remain the last resort for children.

“All the evidence shows that the earlier and longer a child interacts with the criminal justice system, the more likely they are to reoffend in the future,” he said.

Commissioner for Children and Young People Liana Buchanan and Commissioner for Aboriginal Children and Young People Meena Singh said they understood that people wanted to feel safe, but the changes would “radically increase the number of children remanded in custody”.

“[It] will not make the community safer. The fact is that Victoria already has tough bail laws,” they said.

The Human Rights Law Centre, Australian Lawyers Alliance, Federation of Community Legal Centres, Les Twentyman Foundation, child rights organisation 54 reasons and Justice Reform Initiative all condemned the announcement as a backward step that would worsen recidivism and trap vulnerable people, calling for greater investment in interventions.

“With Victoria’s courts already facing severe backlogs, these laws will not only lead to more overcrowded prisons but will also exacerbate the risk of human rights abuses and deaths in custody,” Human Rights Law Centre First Nations justice director Maggie Munn said.

Start the day with a summary of the day’s most important and interesting stories, analysis and insights. Sign up for our Morning Edition newsletter.