The Bail Act 1898 (61 & 62 Vict c 7) was an Act of the

Parliament of the United Kingdom The Parliament of the United Kingdom is the supreme legislative body of the United Kingdom, the Crown Dependencies and the British Overseas Territories. It meets at the Palace of Westminster, London. It alone possesses legislative suprema ...

. It amended the

Indictable Offences Act 1848 In many common law jurisdictions (e.g. England and Wales, Ireland, Canada, Hong Kong, India, Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia, Singapore), an indictable offence is an offence which can only be tried on an indictment after a preliminary hearing ...

, which gave justices the power to give

bail Bail is a set of pre-trial restrictions that are imposed on a suspect to ensure that they will not hamper the judicial process. Bail is the conditional release of a defendant with the promise to appear in court when required. In some countries ...

sureties In finance, a surety , surety bond or guaranty involves a promise by one party to assume responsibility for the debt obligation of a borrower if that borrower defaults. Usually, a surety bond or surety is a promise by a surety or guarantor to pay ...

, to allow the justices to dispense with the need for sureties if they felt that doing so would not "tend to defeat the ends of justice"; this prevented the unhelpful situation where someone who was at no risk of absconding was kept imprisoned for long periods of time because they could not find the wherewithal to post bail.''The public general acts passed in the sixty-first & sixty-second years of the reign of her majesty Queen Victoria''. London: printed for Her Majesty's Stationery Office. 1898.

References

{{UK legislation United Kingdom Acts of Parliament 1898 Bail Criminal law of the United Kingdom