Keep Bailing

Bail agents from all over the country traveled to Los Vegas this week to attend the 2012 annual Professional Bail Agents of the United States (PBUS) conference.

Most people have never needed to use the services of a bail bonds company before and because of that, many still have the belief that bail agents spend their days sitting behind desks, smoking cigars and throwing darts.  The truth of the matter is that there are more than 15,000 licensed bail agents throughout the country and more than 50 percent are women.

8 News Now said that this year’s group of conference attendees remain busy because more and more people are being arrested and taken to jail.  The attendees also wanted to make sure that the public has a greater understanding of the differences between bail bondsmen and bounty hunters.

Bail bondsmen are hired by defendants, their friends or families to help get a person out of jail while they await trial.  A bounty hunter; also called a recovery agent, is someone that is hired by a bail bond company to track down a defendant who did not return to court.

If a defendant decides to skip bail, called “failure to appear” and the bondsman is unable to produce them within a set period of time, they are on the hook for paying the full cost of the bond to the court. One bail bond company owner said that because of advances in technology, they can pretty much find anyone who skips bail.