No, I really don't think so. You know, raising consciousness about the presumption of release is a good idea. This process does that and so on.
The problem is this. Most of those people who are making decisions in the criminal justice system are making them in good faith, I assume, according to what they think is the best thing to do. I don't think these are people who are doing things for bad reasons or who have any kind of bad motive. They have difficult jobs, and they're looking to do the best thing.
I agree with Professor Webster about the risk problem. If I were a young police officer, I think I would tend to push things up and let other people make difficult decisions as well, but I don't see anything that's going to change all of that. People are trying to do the best possible. I mean, obviously they have their own personal concerns in terms of releasing somebody who might commit a serious offence, so why not let somebody further along do it? That's my worry. I think it's very optimistic to think that this will make much of a change.
I go back to the change that was made by the previous government to the Youth Criminal Justice Act bail provisions. I happen to agree with a number of other people that the changes made in 2012 by the previous government to the youth bail laws were an improvement. If I took those two things and said, “Which would I choose?”, I would take the ones with the changes put in by the previous government in 2012. Did those make a difference? The answer is no. I mean, that's fairly clear. The data are fairly clear on that. Could they have made a difference if they had been sold in a different way, if people had been educated, if the importance of them had been told? Probably—or maybe—but they didn't.
I'm afraid that these provisions, as part of a huge bill, will get lost in the shuffle. These are not things that people really have to learn. They can continue doing exactly what they did before.