It amended the Indictable Offences Act 1848, which gave justices the power to give bail on sureties, 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.[2]
References
^Chronological table of the statutes; HMSO, London. 1993.
^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.
