As Territorians grapple with crime, urgent bail reforms are set to be rushed through parliament in an attempt to make the streets safer and put the public's mind at ease. The changes are expected to see a dramatic increase in people held on remand, putting extra pressure on a system already struggling to cope.
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00:00On Monday morning in the centre of Alice Springs, a woman is arrested after allegedly
00:07stabbing her husband with a pair of scissors.
00:10That night in the Darwin suburb of Karama, this bottle shop is held up by two teenagers
00:14wielding an edged weapon, one of whom is arrested soon after.
00:18The spate of violent crime has left locals afraid and frustrated.
00:21It's not the first time it's been robbed anyway, it's been a few times that it's been robbed,
00:26and all these shops here, windows being all smashed.
00:29I would like to see people come out of prison and not go back.
00:33I would like to see people actually reformed, actually educated, actually come out and able
00:38to participate in society.
00:39On the front lines, the Territory's emergency services say the nature of violent crime impacts
00:44their ability to deliver care for Territorians.
00:47At times where there's threats to the welfare of our staff, we encourage our staff and support
00:52them if they need to withdraw these violent cases that we're going to.
00:56At times the care that we can deliver to the patients sometimes is delayed.
00:59The latest violence comes less than a week after the fatal stabbing of beloved supermarket
01:05owner Lynford Fyke in Darwin's northern suburbs.
01:08Now the government is rushing back to parliament to pass harsher bail laws on urgency.
01:12These laws are modelled off laws in both Victoria and New South Wales, which set an overarching
01:20primary test for our courts, which is the safety of the community is the number one priority.
01:26The proposed changes were also raised in February, when a teenager charged over a violent home
01:31invasion was granted bail before absconding into the local community.
01:35At the time, Chief Justice Michael Grant noted that introducing such a rule could result
01:41in a drastic increase of youth in custody.
01:43The changes we're proposing should mean there will be less people bailed.
01:48I know in Chief Justice Grant's four-page statement, he said that in New South Wales remand
01:54went up 32 percent.
01:55The government's reform is expected to pass with bipartisan support.
01:59However, it's yet to be seen how their crime tackling plans will fare in the long term.
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