I I of the Act and although most members are Justices of the Peace this is not required under the Act. In effect in the country the arrangements remain basically the same as they were prior to the legislation being enacted with the stipendiary magistrate sitting in the Children's Court and where a magistrate is not available members or justices are used. Where the court is constituted by a magistrate the court may not sentence a child to a detention for a period longer than six months or to imprisonment for a period longer than three months. When the court is constituted by members only the court may not sentence a child to detention or imprisonment or make an order declaring a child to be in need of care or protection. Members have the power to determine guilt, to convict the child and to sentence a child if the sentence does not involve detention or imprisonment.
Members also have the power to grant bail or remand a child in custody.
As noted earlier there are some suspicions that members have misused this power to remove a child from a community and give the child a short, sharp shock. In the following section the powers of justices are discussed under the Legal System topic. In that section I express the view that ideally justices should not be empowered to preside over courts. I have similar views about the use of members in Children's Court however I would not go as far as Commissioner Dodson who expressed the view that they should not sit on bail hearings for a child. I appreciate the concerns about misuse of members' powers in this regard but an alternative course would be to closely monitor bail determinations by members and the use of remands in custody.