Over the past 12 months, more than 1200 women have been held in Victoria's maximum security prison without conviction and sentencing as a result of a series of punitive bail reforms made in the Bail Act introduced in 2018.
The number of remandees now outnumber sentenced prisoners in Victoria’s women’s system, many spending less than a month on remand but the majority leaving without spending any time under sentence.
The Bail Act 2018 is the strictest bail regime in Australia, and most women entering the system are now denied bail based on having no formal address.