Latest / Early Edition with Ryan Bridge / Steve Cullen: Criminal Lawyer on 2025 remand numbers dropping as prisoner numbers reach record highs (1)
Transcript
- 0:00Speaker 1: Something weird happening with Romand prisoners. The ones locked up
- 0:02Speaker 1: and waiting trial numbers fell for the first three courts
- 0:05Speaker 1: of last year, then randomly jumped by four hundred and
- 0:08Speaker 1: fifty by the end of March this year. Almost all
- 0:11Speaker 1: growth in prisoner numbers over that period was remand. Steve Cullen,
- 0:14Speaker 1: criminal lawyer, with us this morning. I Steve, good morning,
- 0:18Speaker 1: what's going on here?
- 0:20Speaker 2: Well, the figures aren't that easy to interpret. One of
- 0:25Speaker 2: the contributing factors must be, of course, if you have
- 0:28Speaker 2: a particular group coming through who are facing quite serious
- 0:31Speaker 2: charges and they are placed on remand then they start
- 0:35Speaker 2: committing offenses whilst they're on remand failing to comply with
- 0:39Speaker 2: their bowel conditions and such light or re offending whilst
- 0:43Speaker 2: they're on ramand then those ones will be removed from
- 0:46Speaker 2: Romand and placed in custody. That can affect the way
- 0:50Speaker 2: the figures are interpreted. You can get a particular cohort
- 0:53Speaker 2: come through who are non compliant with the law and
- 0:55Speaker 2: non compliant with the judicial system, and they can skew
- 0:58Speaker 2: the figures. But at the that's too early to really
- 1:01Speaker 2: understand just why this is.
- 1:02Speaker 1: Happening random because how many people would be reminded on
- 1:06Speaker 1: bail versus remanded at home.
- 1:10Speaker 2: Oh, that's a Johnny good question. That to fluctuate from
- 1:13Speaker 2: year to year depending upon the nature of the offending
- 1:16Speaker 2: that's alleged against the particular people. You can have particular
- 1:20Speaker 2: crimes that become flavor of the month, as we all
- 1:23Speaker 2: saw over the last four or five years with ram
- 1:25Speaker 2: raids and then motorcycle offending. You can just have particular
- 1:31Speaker 2: community of emphasis on particular crimes. So it's difficult to
- 1:35Speaker 2: say very unusual.
- 1:39Speaker 1: Gotten any wild hot takes Steve any what any wild
- 1:44Speaker 1: hot takes on? Why any any random ideas well?
- 1:48Speaker 2: One thing of it. One suspicion would have to be
- 1:51Speaker 2: that we did have delays in the court system which
- 1:54Speaker 2: led to a lot of people being on remand those
- 1:57Speaker 2: delays were then resolved the courts of in streamline that
- 2:00Speaker 2: sped things up. You can have generational cohorts coming through
- 2:04Speaker 2: as well. We need to see the statistics on that.
- 2:08Speaker 2: Sometimes you can just get a population wave coming through.
- 2:11Speaker 2: It's been well documented overseas and they can cause a
- 2:14Speaker 2: temporary increase in particular types of offending. So let's just
- 2:18Speaker 2: wait and see what the statistics revealed.
- 2:21Speaker 1: Good on youa Steve Collen criminal lawyer.
- 2:23Speaker 2: For more from earlier edition with Ryan Bridge, Listen live
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