What you need to know about Police bond, bail

While delivering the budget speech, the president opposed the offer of Police bond and bail to murder suspects.

The right to bail is provided for in Article 23(6) of the Constitution and is discussed in detail in the subsequent chapters. All courts have power to grant bail depending on their jurisdiction. Bail in serious cases is granted by the High Court and in other minor cases by the Magistrates court.

The major laws relating to bail in Uganda include;

• The 1995 Constitution of Uganda (as amended)
• The Magistrates Court Act (M.C.A.), Cap 16
• The Trial on Indictment Act (T.I.A), Cap 23.
• The Police Act, Cap 303.
• The Uganda People’s Defense Forces Act (UPDF Act), Act No. 7 of 2005.
• The Criminal Procedure Code Act, Cap 116

Bail is the release of an accused person from detention pending trial or until Court takes a decision on his/her case. It is granted for short periods and renewed regularly by Court. It may however be cancelled if the conditions set are not complied with.

According to the Foundation for Human Rights Initiative (FHRI) UGANDA Courts’ interpretation of the law on bail;

The Constitutional right of an accused person to apply for bail flows from the presumption of innocence as provided for in Article 28(3) (a) of the 1995 Constitution which states that;

“An accused person is presumed to be innocent until proved guilty or until that person has accepted guilt”.

• The Constitution in this Article recognizes the common law presumption as a fundamental human right or an inherent human right. This therefore means that a person should only lose his or her freedom after he or she has been convicted.

Thus in granting bail, courts slightly move away from the strict requirements in the law, and instead are driven more by the need to give maximum effect to the constitutional provisions

The difference between bail and police bond;

Bail is an agreement between the accused (including his sureties) and the court that the accused will pay a certain sum of money fixed by the court if the accused fails to attend the trial on a certain date. This is only given by Court.

A police bond is similar to bail in that the effect is almost the same. However, under a police bond, the police officer in charge of a police station has power to release a person taken into custody without a warrant if it is not practicable to take that person to court within 48 hours of arrest. This is given by the police officer in charge of a police station.