A 14-year-old who allegedly nearly hacked off a stranger’s hand with a machete has been wished good luck by a judge after being released on bail, despite claims he had been involved in a string of incidents while in custody.

In one of the first tests of Victoria’s new bail changes, the teenager took his fight for freedom to the Supreme Court, where Justice Christopher Beale said the community would be safer if the teen rehabilitated rather than remained behind bars.

Beale accepted the boy was susceptible to “negative peer influence” from other inmates at the detention centre.

In recent months, he has allegedly repeatedly attacked staff at the centre, both physically and verbally, made sexually inappropriate remarks to female workers, threatened to pour boiling water over others and been

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