Fresno County law enforcement officers have indicated that the county jail could reach its peak capacity in “less than two weeks,” although Rick Hill, who works at the county sheriff’s department believes “we will probably get overcrowded in three or four days.”

Because of this, Hill furthered, the number of pre-trial inmates who might be eligible for early release on their own recognizance, may increase. One Fresno County bail bondsman indicated that allowing inmates to be released without them needing to make bail could lead to an increased number of persons failing to appear at their court date.

It is a widely-known bail industry statistic that defendants are far more likely to go to court if they are released on bail versus being released on the “Own Recognizance” (O.R.). In fact, defendants released on bail show up as required 98% of the time nation-wide. Statisics for those released on O.R. vary by county but are reported in the range of 25%.

Local law enforcement agencies, however, say their hands are tied because “once the ratio of inmates to jail staff reaches a certain level, the county has no choice but to abide by a federal court order to release inmates.”

Pretrial Services Vs. Commercial Bail

Is anyone surprised that bail wins?  Would you be surprised to know that twice as many defendants on unsecured release failed to make their court date?  That is correct: commercial bail (releasing a defendant on bond with a friend and bondsman following up) outperforms pretrial services (releasing a defendant on a promise to appear or their “own recognizance” without a responsibile individual to track the defendant) two to one in getting persons to court.

For 22 years, the Federal Bureau of Justice Statistics has been indicating that bail wins, but recently the pretrial services advocates have been trying to make a case to change or eliminate the bail system as we know it. Bail bonds work because they assign responsibility and financial liability to parties who can control the outcome – getting the defendant back to court while allowing them to return to work and freeing up public funds (via jails and staff). This, of course, at no cost to the public.

Now we have another source to prove our point. This comes from this pretrial service’s own records. This particular agency in Houston, Texas is one of the largest and most sophisticated in the country. Bail works twice as well in preventing failures to appear.

Source: Pretrial Services Vs Commercial Bail

 Jason Wahler former realty star was reportedly arrested a sixth time for drunk driving by the Newport Beach Police Department, last Friday evening. The reality star was stopped and handcuffed by police around 11:00 p.m. on March 20, 2010, but he was released without bail on his own recognizance (“O.R.”) hours later. While an “O.R.” is common for driving under the influence, more often repeat offenders will need bail.

Wahler is no stranger to skirmishes with the law. Last week, in Cabo San Lucas Mexico, he allegedly started a fight in a nightclub and was led out of the establishment by Mexican Police on March 11. Video of the incident has since surfaced on YouTube. Jason was released seven hours after being locked up.

Wahler has attended rehab and he openly admits to having a problem. Just hours after being released from custody, the Beverly Hills bad boy made a statement about his most recent arrest on Twitter. “Thank you for your support,” he tweeted. “But please respect my privacy as this is a personal matter: no need to bombard my parents with phone calls 24/7!“

It’s called “Pretrial Services” and it allows defendants to be released before their court hearing without bail. Commercial bail bondsmen want to limit this. Bondsmen point out that release on “Own Recognizance” is only supposed to be used by defendants who can’t afford their own bail, but that inmates with means seems are being offered the service – at a cost to the tax payers. Tax dollars should not be used to bail out those who have the means to pay nor should the state compete with private business.

But pretrial services supporters feel someone’s ability to pay a bail amount shouldn’t be considered for released at all. They claim these services save local governments money because it’s cheaper to let defendants go than to maintain them in overcrowded prisons – wrong. When a defendant is released without bail there is no guarantor to make sure the defendant appears in court. Reference my previous post siting the specifics problems of release without bail in Philadelphia.

Virginia is now considering a bill to codify what most states put into law decades ago: “Pretrial Release” (“PR” or Release on Own Recognizance ,”OR,” as it’s called in California) is for the “indegent” – those who cannot afford bail.

Pretrial services proponents counter that not passing the bill would remove options for judges and divide defendants into two classes based on money. “We have a lot of concern about people being denied freedom just based on their ability to pay,” said Pat Smith, director of a pretrial agency in Charlottesville.

Currently, if a person can’t afford his bail bond amount – for they are required to pay the amount in its entirety, they have the opportunity to contract with a bail bondsman, who is legally allowed to post the bond for a 10 percent nonrefundable fee. As a safety net, bondsmen require someone — usually a family member or friend — to co-sign for the defendant and be liable if he doesn’t make his court dates.

But with pretrial services, defendants who pay nothing also have nothing to lose by skipping court. In the end, it will cost authorities far more if they have to go on a manhunt to retrieve these skippers.

Pretrial services should be reserved for the indigent, rather than the already strapped taxpayers.

Proponents site savings in jail costs, but it’s a huge problem for public safety. Release on “OR” has a significant place in the legal system, but that place is not to relieve overcrowding.

Here’s a look at some of the problems. It’s five minutes, long by Internet standards. But, it’s a good five minute education.

This morning, I read a blog post correcting some of NPRs “facts”. Here’s an excerpt quoting Dennis Bartlett, of the American Bail Coalition:

“The NPR story is fallacious in that it gives the impression of a great mass of unfortunates stuck in jail, like some medieval black hole in Calcutta. This is far from the case. The cohort of 500,000 non-convicted defendants is not static. Over a year almost the entire cohort turns over by people coming into the system on new arrests and people exiting on bail, going back to freedom after case closure or getting on the Department of Corrections bus to head for the penitentiary after conviction.

Some will not get out on bail. Why? Some further facts which are all supported by the Bureau of Justice Statistics:

• Half of those arrested were already on probation, out on bond or parolees
• Seven-out-of-ten arrested had prior convictions
• Four-out-of-ten had served three or more sentences
• Over 60 percent were on regular drug usage, 40 percent were intoxicated at the time of the offense and 42 percent were current enrollees in a substance abuse program
• Jails are also the largest repository for the mentally ill”

The blog promises more on correcting NPR. I look forward to reading that.

Surprise! – now he is allegedly in trouble once more.  The Hacienda Heights area ex-cop-turned-bail-bondsman has plead not guilty to charges that he illegally solicited bail from inmates in local jails.  County District Attorney’s officials have accused Lee of no less than six felony counts.  The incidents that led to his arrest supposedly took place at the Van Nuys jail on or about July 27, 2008 and Feb. 10, 2009.

Ironically, Lee does not have to be bailed out of jail himself (good thing, because if he called around and bondsmen knew the charge, he might have a hard time getting out).  He has been released on his own recognizance and is due in Los Angeles Superior Court on Feb. 23 for a preliminary hearing, DA’s spokeswoman Shiara D vila-Morales confirmed.

“In essence, the defendant is accused of going to the Van Nuys jail and soliciting Korean-speaking arrestees to post their bail,” D vila-Morales elaborated. Edwin Lee has a current bail bond license, speaks fluent Korean and operates his business out of Koreatown, according to the article. It seems to me that the Department of Insurance ought to have that suspended by now.

The charges against the former LAPD police officer include two counts each of approaching prisoners to solicit bail, approaching prisoners to solicit bail inside a jail facility and failing to keep records of these solicitations.

Bail bond agents are legally forbidden to approach people to solicit bail. They can only do so if they have been contacted by the arrestee, a family member, friend or other interested party, first. It is also a separate felony to solicit bail in a jail facility, but since no records were kept of the alleged solicitations, Edwin Lee was not charged for this. 

Simply put, in the bail industry, a client must contact a bail agent. It is illegal for a bondsman to call and offer unrequested services. Calling a family member is perfectly legal if the defendant contacts the bail bondsman first and asks the bondsman to do so. 

If convicted, Lee could end up with a prison sentence that is about three years and eight months long. The case is now being investigated by the DA’s Justice System Integrity Division. (Good - get these unethical bondsmen out of our industry!)

Surprising was the $1.7 million in taxpayer funds that it takes to screen, release and supervise defendants out on the county’s pretrial release program. You would want to balance that against bail bonds: cost to the tax payer Zero ($0.00).

Pretrial release has a purpose which is codified by law: to help the indigent who have no prior record and are accused of non-violent crimes. Again, balance that with our prior post on Van Nuys Jail “Bail vs. O.R.” Clearly, that person wasn’t indigent – he had the means to be bailed out.

Here’s some of what Accredited had to say (bold emphasis added by me):

Many offenders released through a pretrial release program are financially capable of posting a bail bond, and many have done so in the past. Why should taxpayer funds be used to release an arrested individual who has the means to do so themselves? Why not utilize such taxpayer funds to release truly indigent individuals arrested for non-violent, first-time offenses, as was the original intent of pretrial release programs? Why are your tax dollars being used to compete with private enterprise that does a more effective and efficient job of supervising defendants released from jail?

Promoting a dangerous taxpayer-funded release system that offers little to minimal supervision, while attacking the private surety bail industry with hundreds of years of success behind it, highlights government bureacracy at its best! Not only are taxpayers continually being asked to open up their wallets and spend more on government services, but now another bureacratic organization, the National Association of Counties (NACo), is also asking for you to spend more. NACo “represents” county governments nationwide, and is promoting to county elected officials to create or expand their taxpayer-funded pretrial release systems because money bail is wrong.

Public organizations using taxpayer funds should be accountable for the wise use of such funds and transparent in their effectiveness or non-effectiveness. Taxpayer-funded release systems are neither financially or physically accountable for defendants released under such programs; no one is physically keeping in contact with a defendant and/or their family and making sure the defendant appears for court. In addition, pretrial release programs receive no financial penalty if a defendant fails to appear for court. Your tax dollars are funding the program regardless.

Taxpayer-funded pretrial release programs are complaining that they must provide to the public detailed information on the defendants released through their programs; they say such requests are burdomesome and time consuming. Are they afraid of being transparent by providing proof of their effectiveness? National studies have shown the ineffectiveness of unsecured release and thus why such programs fight against transparency.

Don’t be fooled by their rhetoric or claims of helping their communities by releasing people who have a “right” to unsecured release. The real issue is the lack of public safety and potential danger our communities face when defendants are released back into our communities with no accountability for their actions. Public agencies using taxpayer funds should be transparent and open to providing the most effective services possible. Taxpayer-funded pretrial release programs have been shown time and time again to be ineffective by having the highest failure to appear and fugitive rates. Money bail has worked for hundreds of years because it is effective and accountable to the criminal justice system.

Public policy affects public safety.

these days, too many clients are asking for bail without the required collateral, such as a home or a car, diminishing bail bondsmen’s customer base. And not helping matters is a new policy by Marion County judges setting less expensive cash bonds for minor offenses…

Couple the economic situation with other “solutions” being offered in terms of bail. I hear talk of temporily lowering the bail schedule to allow more people in California to post bail. Huh? The bail schedule is set by judges based on public safety and flight risk. Lower it?  

Add to this jail overcrowding causing manditory releases, out of control pre-trial release (known as release on ”own recognizance” which is intended for the indigent) and so-called “cash bail” on your credit card. 

“We wanted to make sure we are not setting our bonds so high that we are overcrowding our jail,” said Marion Superior Court Judge Robert Altice Jr. of Indiana. How about public safety?

Last December, I spoke with Tony Castro of the Los Angeles Daily News. He asked me how the bail business has changed in the downturned economy. My answer today would be much the same as then: people still need bail bonds. However, the willingness to pay $1000 or $5000 is definately restricted. In better economic times, people had jobs that they needed to go to, so they would bail out. In better economic times, spending money is easier.

All that said, is the bail industry going under? Well, I can only speak for this company and say, not yet! Treading water at times, maybe, but not going under. As an industry, however, bail agents need to stay aware of the climate. Bail is a right and bondsmen help maintain the system that is free to the taxpayers.

Pretrial Release

Continuing Education Credit was offered to bondsmen who attended all required sessions, the first of which was an attorney presentation regarding Pre Trial Release presented by Ash Pirayou of Rutan & Tucker and a panel on Credit Card Bail. Pirayou reviewed current happenings in Pretrial Release (commonly known as Release on Own Recognizance or “OR“) in Santa Clara County. Pirayou said that Santa Clara County jailsare attempting to use pretrial release to relieve jail overcrowding and save money, but the bottom line numbers show a significantly different picture. He called on bail agents to help paint an accurate public picture.

Orange County Sheriff Candidate

Bondsmen were also addressed by Bill Hunt, candidate for Orange County Sheriff.  Hunt, who spent 22 years in the Orange County Sheriff’s Department, spoke passionately about the job he seeks. Hunt told the group that prior to Corona taking office, the OCSD was a model agency. Since then, there have been indictments, a financial crisis and that currently the “culture in the Orange County Jail system is tragic.” As Sheriff, Hunt indicated that he would uphold the bail system because the bail system works and there is no need to create bureaucracy to attempt to do the same thing.

The lunch speakers included Assemblymember Curt Hagman, Supervisor Rob Brown and LA City Attorney Carmen Trutanich.

After lunch, the continuing education featured a Legal Bail Panel. The day concluded with a meet and greet fundraiser for Hagman who is also a bail bondsman, followed by the annual Bocce Ball Tournament.