Bail & bond .. What's the difference?

Factual Questions
1

What’s the difference between bail and bond if you get arrested? Sometimes I hear something like, “$200 bond or $500 bail” on TV.

It seems that in a lot of Judge Judy cases, person X loans/gives person Y money for bail. Then person X has to sue to get the money back. Person Y claims the money was a “gift” and doesn’t have to be repaid. So the 2nd question is: Isn’t bail a promise that you’ll return to court? Don’t you get your bail money back after you show up in court? Judy never asks the defendant whether they got the money back.

2

The words are often used interchangeably but what you pay to get out of jail is bail. A bail bond is a loan that a bail bondsman gives you, with a down payment of usually 10% of the bail, to help with bailing out of jail. The bondsman put up the remaining 90% of the bail amount.

Some courts refund bail if you show up for all of your court dates. That money goes to the bail-bondsman, who gets to keep the 10% originally put up as profit.

3

Which makes me wonder how some people manage to afford bail at all. If I’m facing a charge serious enough that the bail is $100,000, a bail bondsman is going to want a $10,000 fee to make my bail. I don’t know about you but I would have a hell of time coming up with ten grand.

4

I’ll add that in most cases in my area at least, the bondsmen does not actually give any money to the court unless you fail to appear for your appearance. They are registered with the court and trusted to pay the money if required. Of course then you’ll have Dog Chapman after your butt.

5

I worked at a temp agency and they put me in a bail bond office and the rate can be anywhere from 5% to 25% (at the place I worked) depending on the type of bond. There are a whole slew of different kinds.

The judge also can do things like say $100,000 CASH bond, which means someone has to post that in cash. A bail bonds agency wouldn’t handle that.

A bail bond office will not actually put up money, they have insurance that will pay off it the person skips. The office usually gets collateral.

For instance, if you have a $100,000 bond and a 10% fee, it means the agency gets $10,000. In that case we’d get you to give us something as collateral, such as your house, or car or we’d take jewelry or a bunch of crap basically. The office knew fairly well who was and wasn’t going to skip (and be caught)

I just handled to office work but they’d have me do things, like if the person fails to show up and the grandmother put up her (paid for) house as collateral, I’d call the grandma and say “Your grandson skipped. Do you know where he is.” Of course she’d say “no.” Then I’d say “Well you put your house up as collateral, so if you know, I suggest you call us and in the meanwhile, we have started procedures to have you evicted. You have about a week to find him or get out of your home.”

Of course that was bull, but 99% of the time it worked. The grandma would call back and dob her grandson in and we’d pick him up.

It was interesting where I worked 'cause the owner would work with a lot of people. If he felt you were going to be found not guilty he’d even give you time payments on the bond.

Of course that’s one of the problems he knew fairly well what was what, so he’d refuse a lot of people point blank. And that’s one of the things I don’t like about the bail/bond thing as it gives rich people a break, while poor people get stuck in jail consorting with convicted criminals.

6

But maybe Gramma, the dude two doors down and your in-laws could combined. Trust me — I’ve kicked in to more than one “bail kitty” during the course of my life. If you were a career “worker” you could have a stash of cash with a friend or relative. Think of it as a sort of IRA/insurance for hookers and pot dealers.

7

They can help you refinance your home, take out equity loans, etc for bail.

8

What happens if you don’t show up at court and have a good reason for not doing so? Do you still forfeit bail? Say you’re driving to the courthouse and get in an accident that requires hospitalization, or you’re seriously ill, or there happens to be a family emergency that day, or something like that.

9

It’s probably up to the judge. By and large, they have a lot of say in such matters. If you were hospitalized, I imagine they would be lenient. If your grandmother were hospitalized, less so.

10

If judge Judy imposed a hefty sum of bail she’s also dropping a colossal hint that you should hire a lawyer. Which in your case the lawyer would call the court and reschedule trial.

11

Hunter Thompson in his book Hell’s Angels says that the 10% of bail was a big drain on a lot of the Hell’s Angels members. They got arrested a lot and most of the time the charges were dropped but they we still out the 10% of bail.

12

Generally what happens is that if the crime is serious enough that the court thinks you will flee and/or be a danger while out, they will set your bail high enough so that you won’t get out.

Most of the time, you can request a bail reduction hearing where if you have and/or enough people care about you and are willing to put up substantial assets to assure your appearance, the judge will then reduce the bail to what he feels that people can post to allow your release and insure your appearance at trial. Jails are overcrowded and they like to get people out the door to make room for the new fish. :wink:

But, if you start out with a $100k bail, you didn’t get arrested for jaywalking. Chances are you will plead down to a less serious crime and do some time. The feeling is, “Why not save your $10 grand as the time you are doing in jail counts as time served anyways?”