What happens after you are charged in NSW
The complete pathway of a criminal matter, from the Court Attendance Notice to the final outcome, with the decisions you will have to make at each stage and when.
You will get a court date on the notice police gave you, and your first appearance is usually a short mention where nothing is decided. Most people charged with a low-level offence in NSW do not go to gaol; the real question is whether you end up with a conviction. What you do between now and that date decides which group you are in.
- Put the court date in your phone and plan to be inside the building by 9:00 amLesson 2
- Read the notice and find the section of the Act; check below whether the offence is summary, table or strictly indictableSection 3 of this guide
- Do not describe what happened to police, on the phone or in writing, until you have decided how to pleadLesson 3
If the section on your notice is a strictly indictable offence, or you were refused bail, or there is more than one charge, this page tells you what the pathway looks like but it is not a self-representation matter. The consultation at the end is the step.
| Charged | CAN issued, bail decided, first date set |
| First mention | Local Court. Presence confirmed. Plea entered or adjourned |
| Brief of evidence | Served after a not guilty plea |
| Plea | Guilty or not guilty. Decides the pathway |
| Sentence or hearing | Matter finalised |
| Appeal | 28 days to the District Court |
1Being charged
Start here
A criminal matter in NSW begins with a charge, and a charge arrives in one of two ways. Police charge you on the spot, at the station or in the field, and hand you a Court Attendance Notice. Or police investigate, decide to charge later, and serve a Future Court Attendance Notice by post or in person, sometimes weeks after the incident. Either way the notice is the document that starts the proceedings: it names the offence, the section of the Act, the court and the date.
At the time of charge police make a bail decision. Most people on Local Court matters are released without bail, or on bail with conditions. If police refuse bail you are held and brought before a court as soon as practicable, usually the next sitting day, where you can apply for bail. Any conditions imposed at the station bind you from that moment, and breaching them is a separate offence.
Read the notice the day you receive it, photograph every page, and put the court date in your phone. The course on possess prohibited drug walks through a Court Attendance Notice field by field in Lesson 1; the fields are the same for every offence.
Legal basis: Criminal Procedure Act 1986 (NSW) ss 172 to 177 (court attendance notices); Bail Act 2013 (NSW) Parts 3 and 4. This is a summary for general understanding. The full provisions are more detailed and may not apply in all circumstances.
2The first mention
Procedural
Your first court date is a mention. It is short, usually two or three minutes at the bar table, and it is administrative. The court confirms you have appeared, asks whether you have a lawyer or intend to get one, and asks how you intend to plead. Nothing about guilt is decided unless you choose to plead guilty and ask to be sentenced then and there, which for most people is not the right choice on a first date.
The decision at a first mention is usually not the plea. It is whether you are ready. If you are not, you ask for an adjournment, and for a first request the court almost always grants four to six weeks. Reasons the court accepts every day: to get legal advice, to read the brief, to await a response to representations, to complete a program before sentence.
What happens if you do not attend depends on your bail status. Without bail, the court can proceed in your absence and, for many summary offences, convict you on the police facts. On bail, failing to appear is an offence and the court can issue a warrant. Both can be undone, the first by an annulment application within two years, but neither is where you want to start.
Legal basis: Criminal Procedure Act 1986 (NSW) Chapter 4 Part 2; ss 190 to 199 (absence of accused); Crimes (Appeal and Review) Act 2001 (NSW) Part 2 (annulment); Bail Act 2013 (NSW) s 79. This is a summary for general understanding. The full provisions are more detailed and may not apply in all circumstances.
3Summary and indictable matters
Which court
The pathway from here depends on the category of offence, and the category is fixed by legislation, not by how serious the facts feel.
Summary offences are dealt with entirely in the Local Court by a Judge sitting alone. Most traffic offences, drug possession, common assault and offensive conduct are summary. A guilty plea leads to sentence in the Local Court; a not guilty plea leads to a defended hearing in the Local Court.
Table offences are indictable offences that the legislation allows to be dealt with summarily unless the prosecution, or in some cases the accused, elects to have them dealt with on indictment. Most assaults occasioning actual bodily harm, most drug supply below commercial quantity, larceny, and many fraud offences are in this group. In practice the large majority stay in the Local Court, which caps the sentence the court can impose, usually at two years for a single offence.
Strictly indictable offences must go to the District or Supreme Court. Murder, manslaughter, sexual assault, robbery, commercial drug supply, and wounding with intent are examples. They begin in the Local Court but only for the committal stage, described below.
Your Court Attendance Notice does not say which category you are in. The section of the Act does, and the guide on strictly indictable offences explains how to tell.
Legal basis: Criminal Procedure Act 1986 (NSW) Chapter 5 and Schedule 1 (Tables 1 and 2); s 267 (jurisdictional limit). This is a summary for general understanding. The full provisions are more detailed and may not apply in all circumstances.
4The brief of evidence
Disclosure
If you plead not guilty in the Local Court, the court orders the prosecution to serve a brief of evidence within a set period, usually four to six weeks. The brief is everything the prosecution intends to rely on: police statements, civilian witness statements, body-worn camera footage, CCTV, the record of interview if you gave one, forensic certificates, photographs, and the criminal history the prosecution will tender if you are convicted.
The brief is the single most important document in a contested matter, because it tells you what the prosecution can actually prove rather than what the facts sheet says happened. Weaknesses live in it: a witness who did not see what the facts sheet says they saw, an interview where the caution was not given properly, a search with no stated basis, a certificate that was never obtained. Reading a brief properly is a lawyer's core skill. A self-represented person can read it, and should, but the guide on pleading not guilty in the Local Court is honest about what that involves.
Do not enter a final plea of not guilty on the assumption the brief will help you, and do not enter a guilty plea before you have at least seen what the prosecution has. If you need time to consider the brief, that is a reason for an adjournment.
Legal basis: Criminal Procedure Act 1986 (NSW) ss 183 to 187 (brief of evidence in summary proceedings). This is a summary for general understanding. The full provisions are more detailed and may not apply in all circumstances.
5The plea
The decision
Guilty or not guilty. It is the one decision in a criminal matter that cannot easily be undone, and the law treats a guilty plea as a genuine admission of every element of the offence. A plea entered to make the matter go away, called a plea of convenience, is very difficult to withdraw later.
Three questions decide it. Can the prosecution prove every element of the offence on the evidence it has? What is the realistic outcome if you plead guilty, with proper preparation, against the outcome if you plead not guilty and lose? And are you inside or outside the situations in which representing yourself is sensible at all: prior convictions, multiple charges, a possible defence, a quantity or injury that moves the offence up a category, a visa or professional registration in play.
A guilty plea at the first opportunity attracts a sentencing discount. In the Local Court it is at the Judge's discretion and in practice runs up to about 25 percent. For strictly indictable matters the discount is fixed by the early appropriate guilty plea scheme and falls in steps as the matter progresses, which the guide on the EAGP process explains.
Legal basis: Crimes (Sentencing Procedure) Act 1999 (NSW) s 22 (guilty plea) and Part 3 Division 1A (EAGP discounts); Meissner v The Queen (1995) 184 CLR 132. This is a summary for general understanding. The full provisions are more detailed and may not apply in all circumstances.
6The committal process
Indictable matters
For strictly indictable offences, and for table offences where an election is made, the Local Court does not decide the matter. It manages the committal: the stage at which the brief is served, a charge certificate is filed by the prosecution confirming which charges will proceed, a case conference is held between the prosecutor and the defence lawyer to see whether a plea can be agreed, and the matter is then committed to the District or Supreme Court for trial or, if a plea is entered, for sentence.
The committal process is designed around represented defendants. The case conference in particular requires a lawyer; an unrepresented person cannot participate in it, and the discount structure of the EAGP scheme is built on the plea being entered at or before that conference. If your matter is strictly indictable, this is not a self-representation pathway, and Legal Aid eligibility is broader for these matters for that reason.
Legal basis: Criminal Procedure Act 1986 (NSW) Chapter 3 Part 2 (committal proceedings), ss 62 to 99. This is a summary for general understanding. The full provisions are more detailed and may not apply in all circumstances.
7Sentencing
After a guilty plea or finding
Sentence follows a guilty plea or a finding of guilt. The court considers the objective seriousness of the offence and your subjective circumstances, applies the purposes of sentencing, and chooses from a ladder of orders that runs from a dismissal without conviction to full-time imprisonment. The guide on sentencing in NSW sets out every order and what it involves; the guide on section 10 covers the non-conviction outcomes.
Preparation is what moves a matter along that ladder. References addressed to the court, a letter from you, evidence of a program completed, and short structured submissions are the material the Judge needs. Module 3 of the possess prohibited drug course builds each of those documents, and the method transfers to any Local Court sentence.
8Appeals
After sentence
A person convicted or sentenced in the Local Court can appeal to the District Court as of right, within 28 days. The appeal is a rehearing, the District Court can impose a heavier sentence as well as a lighter one, and it must warn you before doing so. District and Supreme Court outcomes are appealed to the Court of Criminal Appeal, where leave is required and the grounds are error rather than rehearing. The guide on appeals in the Local Court explains the first of these.
Legal basis: Crimes (Appeal and Review) Act 2001 (NSW) Part 3; Criminal Appeal Act 1912 (NSW). This is a summary for general understanding. The full provisions are more detailed and may not apply in all circumstances.
9What to do right now
Action
Find the section of the Act on your notice and check whether the offence is summary, table or strictly indictable. That single fact decides whether the rest of this site is written for you.
Every decision in a criminal matter affects the next one. Bail conditions accepted at the station shape what you can do before court. An adjournment taken at the first mention buys the time in which references and programs get done. A plea entered before the brief is read forecloses the argument the brief might have supported. Get the sequence right and the rest of the process becomes manageable.
If the offence is strictly indictable or you are on a show cause bail
The committal process, the case conference and the EAGP discount structure are built around a represented defendant, and the bail rules for serious offences reverse the usual presumption. If your notice cites an offence in either group, a consultation with the lawyers who built Standard before your first mention is the right step.
Request a consultationGeneral information only, not legal advice. NSW-specific. Every matter turns on its own facts and laws can change. Reading this guide does not create a solicitor-client relationship between you and the lawyers who produced it.