The Bail and Accommodation Support Service is an after-hours service for police who are considering granting conditional bail to a young person in custody. Its stated purpose is to assist in the granting of conditional bail and divert young people from unnecessary short-term remand — an accurate description of the problem and a direct acknowledgement that some remand is an accommodation failure rather than a risk judgement.

It is the right instrument, aimed at the right step, and it appears in Child refused police bail is held, brought to court, and released on bail as an optional step, because whether it engages depends on the hour, the location and whether a bed exists to offer.

The spending shape. Nationally in 2024-25, detention-based supervision accounted for 66.2 per cent of total youth justice expenditure — about $1.1 billion. Community-based supervision, which is where the great majority of young people under supervision actually are, takes the remaining third.

Put beside the finding that 72 to 80 per cent of young people in detention on an average night are unsentenced, that is the arithmetic of this section: about two-thirds of the money goes to detention, and most of the people in detention are waiting rather than serving.