Introduction

10.1 Persons subject to a protection order will sometimes be charged with a criminal offence and a decision will be made about whether they should be released on bail, and if so, what conditions they should be subject to while on bail. The criminal offence they are charged with may have been an incident of family violence that prompted the protection order, another incident of criminal family violence, or a crime unrelated to family violence.

10.2 After briefly describing bail and its purposes, including bail in the context of family violence, this chapter considers three important ways in which bail and family violence laws interact. The first concerns the question of whether there should be a presumption for or against the granting of bail for crimes committed in a family violence context. The second concerns bail conditions and whether they can conflict with family violence protection order conditions.^[1] Such conflicts and ambiguity may cause confusion and compromise the safety of protected persons. Finally, the chapter considers whether victims of family violence are properly informed about bail decisions and understand what the conditions of bail mean and how they might interact with a protection order.