The NSW juvenile justice system is straining under a law and order agenda set on being tough with young offenders.

Detention centres in NSW are reaching capacity. Image: publik16

Stricter bail conditions and heavy policing of breaches have continued to pack detention centres to a four-year capacity high.

According to Australian Bureau of Statistics and Research (ABS), the most common bail restriction broken by young offenders is the 10pm curfew.

During this time, the offender must remain at their residence with a parent until 6am.

However, this bail condition has set a precedent of extremely high numbers of police visits to offenders at any time during the night.

This is costing the state hundreds of millions of dollars and recently saw the resignation of the minister responsible who wanted to change policy direction.

Tess Morrell investigates how being ‘out-on-bail’ now means strict conditions, heavy surveillance and easy arrests.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

This story was originally aired on 2SER show, Razor’s edge.