The an­tic­i­pat­ed Bail (Amend­ment) Act has gone in­to full force.

The leg­is­la­tion be­came law on Mon­day af­ter it was ap­proved by the Of­fice of the Pres­i­dent, At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi con­firmed yes­ter­day.

The con­tro­ver­sial leg­is­la­tion be­came law hours be­fore Cedric “Burkie” Burke, of Sea Lots man was tak­en in­to cus­tody for a sec­ond time in a month.

The Act was passed by the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives dur­ing a spe­cial sit­ting last Wednes­day with Op­po­si­tion sup­port. It had been ap­proved in the Sen­ate in June with­out the sup­port of the Op­po­si­tion.

The Op­po­si­tion, how­ev­er, lent sup­port to the pro­posed leg­is­la­tion when it was brought to the House in the height of the crime cri­sis af­ter mur­ders spiked last month.

Gov­ern­ment said the po­lice had asked for the bill to be brought “im­me­di­ate­ly.”

The Act seeks to re­strict bail for 120 days if a per­son has a con­vic­tion for cer­tain se­ri­ous of­fences and is charged for one of them again.

Bail will al­so be re­strict­ed if some­one is charged for a cer­tain se­ri­ous of­fences, is out on bail and is charged for the same cat­e­go­ry of of­fence.

The of­fences to which the bill ap­plies in­clude those which car­ry a penal­ty of 10 years’ jail con­cern­ing leg­is­la­tion re­gard­ing Dan­ger­ous Drugs, Of­fences Against the Per­son, Kid­nap­ping, Sex­u­al Of­fences (against chil­dren), Sex­u­al Of­fences, An­ti-Ter­ror­ism, Traf­fick­ing In Per­sons and Firearms Act.

Dur­ing de­bate Al-Rawi had said the law would al­low for a “cool­ing off” pe­ri­od as it did in pre­vi­ous years un­der the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship tenure when it was in force dur­ing crime spikes at that time.

Af­ter the pas­sage of the leg­is­la­tion by par­lia­men­tar­i­ans, Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith said time for talk was over and he in­tend­ed to act now.

Al-Rawi said he would have sought to have the bill pro­claimed as law im­me­di­ate­ly. He said yes­ter­day the Of­fice of the Pres­i­dent signed off on the bill Mon­day.

Yes­ter­day, po­lice sources told Guardian Me­dia said “a lot of things are in the air now....there’ll be de­vel­op­ments.”

Af­ter the de­bate UNC deputy leader David Lee had chal­lenged Gov­ern­ment to show re­sults of the bill in the short­est pos­si­ble time. Lee was un­avail­able yes­ter­day but UNC Ra­mona Ram­di­al - whose con­stituen­cy re­cent­ly lost sev­en fish­er­men to “pi­rates” - said, “It’s been pro­claimed quick­ly and it ap­pears the po­lice are mak­ing ef­forts to use the law. So let’s see what re­sults flow from the over­all sit­u­a­tion and how it’ll be op­er­a­tionalised in get­ting cul­prits off the streets.”

Al-Rawi said yes­ter­day that more an­ti-crime leg­is­la­tion is be­ing put to­geth­er to be pre­sent­ed in the next and fi­nal ses­sion of Par­lia­ment which be­gins in Sep­tem­ber.

Among these will be the de­crim­i­nal­i­sa­tion of mar­i­jua­na, cam­paign fi­nance re­form and Reg­is­tra­tion of Deeds bills. The Deed Reg­is­tra­tion bill per­tains to how some in­di­vid­u­als “hide” their mon­ey, he said.

Al-Rawi added amend­ments are al­so be­ing for­mu­lat­ed to the Re­al Es­tate Act on how the sec­tor is man­aged, “a lot of fraud oc­curs there,” he added.

A sig­nif­i­cant part of leg­is­la­tion be­ing pre­sent­ed is how it’s op­er­a­tionalised, “I’m au­dit­ing every­thing,” the AG added.