The Granting of Bail: Principles and Practice*
| Date | 01 January 1968 |
| Published date | 01 January 1968 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2230.1968.tb01173.x |
| Author | A. K. Bottomley |
THE GRANTING
OF
BAIL:
PRINCIPLES AND PRACTICE
it
THERE
is a growing awareness among those concerned with the
administration
of
justice about the working of the bail system; not
only are the legal criteria and principles upon which bail should be
granted being questioned and examined, but also there is evidence
of a practical concern for the effects which a remand in custody may
have upon the person to whom bail is not granted. In the United
States, the pioneering work done by the Vera Foundation in the
Manhattan Bail Project led to the National Conference
on
Bail and
Criminal Justice, held in Washington, D.C., during May
1964,
which encouraged many
of
the delegates to start similar bail pro-
jects in their
own
home states.' In England, also, first steps in
the same direction have been taken by
('
Justice," the British
Section of the International Commission of Jurists, which arranged
a one-day conference on
'(
Bail and Remands in Custody
)'
on
November
27, 1965.a
Justice
"
has recently set up
a
working party to consider various aspects
of
this problem."
As
a result
of
this conference,
STATIBTICAL BACKQROUND
The annually published criminal statistics of England and Wales
and statistical tables published by the Prison Department of the
Home Office
ti
give some idea of the size
of
the problem, although
they do not shed much light upon the nature of the factors involved.
The
C~iminal Statistics
give details only of those persons detained
in custody after committal
for
trial, and they do not provide any
equivalent figures
for
those persons who are finally dealt with by
the magistrates. In
1964, 22,558
indictable offenders were com-
mitted for trial and
8,774
of them
(Le.,
almost
89
per cent.) were
remanded in cust0dy.O
An
examination
of
the statistics
of
the
last
fifty years shows that the proportion remanded in custody before
trial has almost halved in that time, although the number of per-
sons committed
for
trial has been steadily increasing (Table
1).
Note: Unfortunately, this paper
WBR
written too early
for
conRideration
nf
tlie Criminal Justice Act
'1967,
of
which
SR.
18-93
refer
to
new
restrictions
on
the refusal
of
bail.
1
National Conference on
Bail
and
Criminal
Jurtice:
Proceeding9 and Interim
Report
(Washington,
D.C..
19GS).
1
Reported in
the
New
r,aw
Journal.
December
9,
1965,
p.
196.
9
Nctn
Laio
Journal,
Jiine
ZG,
19GG,
p.
954.
This
working party
pblished
an
Interim
Report in Dereinher
19GO.
4
Crtminnl
Slaliptics
:
Enqrantl
and
Walea,
1866
(Cmnd.
33.72).
5
IEcport
on
the
Work
of the Prison
Deparlmcnt,
N65.
Stafistirnl
Tables
(Crnnd.
3304).
6
Ciiminal
StathtiCB:
England
and
WaTcs,
1964,
Table
1
(a).
40
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