Bail Bonds - Making Bail

When a person is arrested and charged with a crime, they are usually allowed the opportunity to get bail and wait for their trial without being locked up in a county jail. Most county jails are charged with the task of holding defendants who are waiting on trial dates or housing defendants who have been convicted of a crime and have been sentenced to a year or less in jail.

Defendants who are sentenced to serve more than a year go to a prison which is better equipped for long term housing of people convicted of crimes. But because it can take time to get to trial, a county jail can be housing people who are accused of everything from non violent crimes to murder. And since jails are generally not quipped like prisons with segregation and classification units for violent and dangerous offenders, violent inmates can be mixed in with the non violent inmates. This is why it’s important to get bail and get out of jail whenever possible.

Four states, Oregon, Illinois, Wisconsin and Kentucky have banned professional bail bonds and instead opt to allow a defendant to put down ten percent of the required bail to get out of jail while they await trial. The majority of states however recognize that even ten percent of thousands of dollars may be more than the average defendant can raise and allow the use of bail bonds to be used. Bonds are a surety that a professional bail bondsman or corporation put down to ensure a defendant will appear at their trial.

Once a defendant has been arraigned in a preliminary hearing the bail is set by the judge. Bail amounts vary depending on the charges, the defendant’s criminal record and other factors such as ties to the community- i.e. employment and family. In the four states that don’t allow bail bonds a $10,000 bail would require ten percent or $1,000 from the defendant in order for the defendant to get out of jail to await the trial date. If the bond is $100,000 however that ten percent becomes $10,000 and that can become impossible to come up with for most people. The result, the majority of defendants are forced to sit in over crowded jails while they wait for court dates and if the charges are serious such as murder or rape, a trial can take a year or more to get to. For more serious charges like this, the defendants own lawyer will generally agree to waive the right to a speedy trial in order to prepare a proper defense and that takes time. Time a defendant sitting in county lock up may feel they don’t have to loose.

In states that do accept bail bonds the bondsman would pay the bail amount by putting up the ten percent and in exchange the defendant would be paying the bail bondsman a fee of ten to fifteen percent of their bond and putting up assets to secure the remaining bond amount.