Bail is not a finding of guilt and it is not a sentence. It is a prediction about what a person will do before their matter is heard, and for a child it turns substantially on where they will sleep.

That is the structural problem this database can see. A court cannot make a child a bed. Where accommodation is the obstacle, the court's options are to release into an arrangement it is not satisfied with, or to remand. New South Wales legislation provides that a child in out-of-home care must not be refused bail on account of there being no suitable placement, and Legal Aid NSW has reported that the provision is not always effective in practice — young people have been held sometimes in excess of a fortnight while accommodation is arranged.

The numbers say the decision is usually reversed. Nationally in 2024-25, 60 per cent of completed periods of unsentenced detention ended with the young person released on bail, and the median completed period was five days. Between jurisdictions the variation is enormous: 15 per cent of remand periods in the Northern Territory ended in bail against 84 per cent in Western Australia.

See Child refused police bail is held, brought to court, and released on bail and A bed shortage is being recorded as a judicial decision about risk.