Police prioritise community safety and their own skin when deciding whether an alleged offender should be released on bail, research has uncovered.
The research released on Wednesday answers why more than half (53.5 per cent) of adults refused bail by NSW Police were granted bail by the state's courts within 24 hours in 2023.
Police had been more conservative than the courts in their bail decisions for a long time, NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research executive director Jackie Fitzgerald said.
"But until now we haven't known whether this was due to a different risk tolerance or other factors," she said.
"We can now see from this new research that it is a bit of both."
In NSW, police are required to make a bail decision once a person has been charged.
If a person is refused bail, they are usually brought before a court within 24 hours.
The bureau found police had a high concern for community safety when making bail decisions.
The senior officers also were motivated to avoid wearing the consequences and recriminations of a poor bail decision and associated scrutiny from the media, the community and victims.
Police rarely applied discretion for serious offences where an accused person needed to "show cause" as to why their detention was not justified.
"The decision then lies with the magistrate," Ms Fitzgerald said.
"It is also the case that the magistrates have much more insight into factors which influence the likelihood of bail - such the defendant's accommodation, job, and family situation."
Custody was also used as a 'circuit breaker' to prevent immediate reoffending in domestic violence cases, which make up about a third of criminal cases in NSW.
The findings were derived from observations of 252 first court bail hearings and 40 interviews with criminal justice stakeholders.
In those cases, the court granted bail to 44 per cent of defendants and released another five per cent with no conditions.
Defendants were either refused release or declined to apply for bail in 44 per cent of cases.
The remaining cases ended with a guilty plea, though only one resulted in a jail sentence.
Ms Fitzgerald said the research highlighted a "system inefficiency" in holding people soon to be released.
"Plus, that short custodial episode can be potentially harmful for the defendant," she said.
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