When you are charged with a criminal offence, there are a variety of things that you may have to face and you should be prepared for them.
The police can either:
- Release you and send you a Court Hearing Notice
- Release you and send you a Summons to attend court
- Release you on police bail and provide you with your first court date, or
- Refuse bail and take you to court for a Magistrate to decide on bail.
Here’s a quick overview of what your options for release are after being charged with an offence.
Court Hearing Notice
Court Hearing Notices are generally used for less serious charges.
You are usually sent these documents by post and you can choose to attend court or to have the matter dealt with in your absence.
You may also have a lawyer appear for you in court on your behalf, either with or without you present.
If you do not attend court and have not informed the court of what you are wanting to do with the charge, the charge can be dealt with in your absence, and a conviction recorded and sentence given.
Summons
Summonses are generally used for less to medium-serious level charges.
You are generally served with a summons by the police, and you are required to attend court.
Sometimes, at your first court date, the summons can be replaced by bail.
If you do not attend court on a summons, you can be arrested and brought to the court.
Police bail / Court bail
For more serious charges, a court hearing notice and summons may be inappropriate, so the police must consider whether to release you on bail.
You will receive your bail paperwork from the police at the police station. Bail will require you to attend court, and may or may not include conditions.
If you do not attend court on police bail, you can be arrested and brought to the court. There, a Magistrate or Judge will have to decide on whether to release you on bail again. You can also be charged with the offence of Breaching Bail.
If the police consider that it is inappropriate to release you on bail, they will refuse police bail and you will be brought to court at the first reasonable opportunity (usually the day you are charged or the next morning) so that you have the opportunity to ask the Magistrate to release you on bail.
What is bail?
Being released on bail means that you are released into the community pending your court case being determined and finalised. You can simply be required to attend court on a certain date, or there may be some conditions attached to your bail.
Common bail conditions include:
- A personal undertaking (set as a certain amount of money), which is a written promise to the court that if you fail to attend your court hearings, you will forfeit that amount of money to the State;
- A surety, which is a third person (usually a family member of friend), who also undertakes to forfeit a certain amount of money to the State if you do not attend your court hearings. A surety can range from a few hundred dollars to hundreds of thousands, depending on the seriousness of the charges and the risks involved in having you on bail. The surety can extend to the next court hearing only, or for the entirety of the time you are on bail;
- A residential condition that requires you to reside at a certain address;
- A reporting condition that requires you to report to your local police station on set days of the week;
- A curfew, which means you must be at your house between certain hours, usually during the night. It is not unusual for the police to attend at your house during the curfew hours to make sure you are home;
- Protective bail conditions, which prohibit you from approaching or communicating with certain people such as the alleged victim and witnesses;
- A requirement to surrender your passport to the court and not apply for any new passports; and
- A condition requiring you to stay in Western Australia and prohibiting you from approaching any point of departure, such as the domestic and international airports, and any sea ports.
For very serious charges, the court may also require a cash deposit. This means you must actually pay money to the court before you are released. This condition is fairly uncommon.
Other than the standard conditions above, the court can also set other conditions that are considered appropriate in the circumstances. For example, prohibiting you from approaching a certain place or prohibiting you from doing certain things, such as consuming alcohol and drugs.
If you are released on bail with conditions, you can apply to change those conditions in court at a later date.
A further option for bail is home detention, which confines you to your home with an electronic monitoring device. A report will be ordered by the court to comment on the suitability of the address proposed, and will require your bail application to be adjourned whist this is done.
It is important to obtain legal advice before making an application for bail in court, because, if you are refused bail by a Magistrate or Judge, you cannot simply keep reapplying for bail unless your circumstances have changed since the last time you applied for bail, or you make an application to the Supreme Court.
If you are alleged to have committed a serious offence whilst on bail, you may fall under Schedule II, which means that you will have to show exceptional circumstances in order to be released on bail again.
Some applications can be made with little notice, whilst others require more preparation time, depending on the seriousness of your charges, the prosecution’s attitude to bail, and your personal circumstances.
Get legal advice from our Perth bail lawyer
Chambers Legal regularly deals with these matters, and can represent you for a bail application in court.
If you would like advice on a potential bail application, please contact us on (08) 9500 8915 or at [email protected].