Bail, Bondsmen and Bounty Hunters

Factual Questions
1

I watched Jackie Brown last night and this was a big part of the movie, but I didn’t understand the process. I’ve read the relevant articles on Wikipedia but it still doesn’t make much sense to me.

As far as I can make out, when you get arrested in the US, you have to pay thousands of dollars to get bail. Obviously most people don’t have this type of money, so you can get a “bondsman” to pay bail for you. The bondsman does this…out of the goodness of his heart? Where does he get the money from? How does he make a profit? Do people buy insurance policies from the bondsman against getting arrested? Or does he loan the money to you? (If so, how does he ensure he gets his money back?)

If you disappear while you are on bail, a bounty hunter hunts you down and bring you back to police custody. The bounty hunter gets a reward for this. Are the bounty hunters police officers? Are they civilians who do this as a career? Or are they random people who want the reward money? How do they find out about the bounty? Why don’t the police search for the fugitive?

Please help me, it’s all very confusing and organised-crime-like to this Brit! (Over here, you are automatically given bail unless you are dangerous or likely to leave the country and if you run, the police see to it that you are arrested again. No money changes hands.)

Thaks!

2

[QUOTE=chris156]

As far as I can make out, when you get arrested in the US, you have to pay thousands of dollars to get bail. Obviously most people don’t have this type of money, so you can get a “bondsman” to pay bail for you. The bondsman does this…out of the goodness of his heart? Where does he get the money from? How does he make a profit? Do people buy insurance policies from the bondsman against getting arrested? Or does he loan the money to you? (If so, how does he ensure he gets his money back?)

[/quote]

The bail bond is a loan. You pay (typically) 10% up front. The bondsman keeps the 10%. So, say your bail is $100,000. You give the bondsman ten grand. He gives the court $100,000. When you show up on your court date, the bondsman gets his $100,000 back, and keeps the $10,000 that you gave him. If you don’t show up, he risks losing the $100,000 bail, which is an excellent motivator for him to come after you.

Most bails are not that high – $100,000 is typical for a very serious felony. Lesser crimes will have much smaller bails or none at all.

They are almost always civilians, though many of them are former police officers. They can either be the bail bondsman themselves, or work for them. In some states, bounties are posted publicly and any bounty hunter can theoretically go after them, though I’m not sure how common that is these days. Many states require training and licenses to be a bounty hunter.

3

You can also be released on your own recognicense (no bail) here in the States as well. It basically means that the court for some reason has not deemed you a flight risk (steady job, first offense, ties to a community and such) or the crime commited did not carry a long sentance. My uncle is a bail bondsman and puts up his own money to loan out to locals who commit crimes. I’m not sure of the details of how he makes a profit because he’s not the type of guy that talks about his business affairs or about the people he deals with. I’ll leave that to someone else to carify. But yes, the police can and do hunt for bail jumpers as well. I believe the bondsman losses his money if they find the guy first.

4

Ahh, I didn’t realise that you got the bail money back!

It seems like there’s a big money laundering issue, though…isn’t the 10% paid to the bondsman likely to be the proceeds of crime?

5

[QUOTE=friedo]
The bail bond is a loan. You pay (typically) 10% up front. The bondsman keeps the 10%. So, say your bail is $100,000. You give the bondsman ten grand. He gives the court $100,000. When you show up on your court date, the bondsman gets his $100,000 back, and keeps the $10,000 that you gave him. If you don’t show up, he risks losing the $100,000 bail, which is an excellent motivator for him to come after you.

Most bails are not that high – $100,000 is typical for a very serious felony. Lesser crimes will have much smaller bails or none at all.

They are almost always civilians, though many of them are former police officers. They can either be the bail bondsman themselves, or work for them. In some states, bounties are posted publicly and any bounty hunter can theoretically go after them, though I’m not sure how common that is these days. Many states require training and licenses to be a bounty hunter.
[/QUOTE]

Close, but not quite.
First off a bond is not a loan. It is a bond, which is similar to insurance, but technically not exactly the same.
You get arrested, the judge sets a bail, let’s say $10,000. You/relative/spouse/friend/whoever contact a bail bondsman to arrange bail. Someone pays the BB the price of the bond (generally 10%) to get your ass out of jail. The bail bondman then pledges to the court a bond of $10,000 that you will appear. he does not drive down to the court house with 10 large in a briefcase.
Assuming you show up for your court date, except for you paying for your bond, no money changes hands.
If you skip, then and only then does the BB have to pay on the bond, he then employs a bounty hunter to find your ass, and drag you back to court, so that he can recover his bond.
So if you skip, you paid for the bond, the BB pays the bond, when you don’t show, when your ass is finally drug back into court, the bond is recovered by the BB.

6

Just to add: there’s no requirement to go to a bail bondsman whatsoever. If bail is set at $10,000, and you can raise $10,000 cash, you can post your own bond and a bail bondsman never comes into the picture. In that case, if you miss your court date, the $10,000 is forfeit, but unless a cash reward is posted for your capture (very rare), no bounty hunter will try to track you down.

7

A few more points:

Bondsmen these days usually are themselves covered by insurance policies, so it isn’t as if they’ll go bankrupt if they have to default on a million-dollar bond. Their premiums would go up of course so they’re still motivated to try to find no-shows.

The right of bondsmen or their duly authorized hirelings to return fugitives to custody was upheld by the United States Supreme Court. Technically they’re considered deputies of the court, and these days they prefer to be called “bail enforcement agents” since “bounty hunter” sounds too yahoo. The courts and police don’t want the job of tracking down FTAs (Failure To Appear), so they’re happy to let the bail agents do it.

8

You are right to be confused by the movie Jackie Brown re: bail bonds. They got it all wrong.

At first Samuel L. Jackson gives the bondsman $1k on a $10k bond for the young black kid. Then he kills him and goes to get his $1k back to use to bail out Jackie Brown.

This is wrong. As others have said, when you use a bondsman, you typically post 10% of the whole bond, and the bondsman uses that as profit if and when you show up for trial. Or, in the movie’s case, when the young black kid was killed (by Samuel L. Jackson unbeknownst to the bondsman) the bondsman would be off the hook for his bond, but Sam L. 's $1k would be a non-refundable premium.

9

Does the Supreme Court decision still stand that a bondsmen can enter premises to arrest you without a search warrant.

10

[QUOTE=Will Repair]
Does the Supreme Court decision still stand that a bondsmen can enter premises to arrest you without a search warrant.
[/QUOTE]
Yep, on the theory that when you the arrestee agree to be bonded out, you are giving prior permission for a bond agent to enter any premises you happen to be in, whether your home or someone else’s. The bond agent will be in deep doo-doo if they kick in the wrong door however.

11

[QUOTE=chris156]
Ahh, I didn’t realise that you got the bail money back!

It seems like there’s a big money laundering issue, though…isn’t the 10% paid to the bondsman likely to be the proceeds of crime?
[/QUOTE]

The fee isn’t always going to be paid from criminal proceeds. Many people have to post bond because they got arrested for something like DUI where there are no financial proceeds involved; the money comes from the defendant’s pocket or from friends or relatives. It’s also not true money laundering because the defendant isn’t recovering any of the bondsman’s fee.

That said, bondsmen have to be licensed and insured; their livelihood depends on their professional reputation. The vast majority are going to be careful about how they do business.

Robin

12

You are right to be confused about bounty hunters. They are a quirk of U.S. law and actually have much greater powers than real law enforcement officers for arrest purposes. Basically, a bounty hunter has the right to track you across state lines, use necessary force to subdue you, and kidnap you if you skip your court appearance. They have the right to break down at door at 4:00 am, subdue you, handcuff and shackle you, and then make a nice drive cross-country to get you back to the state you skipped bail on for the police to take you in.

One reason this is necessary is that most real law enforcement officers only have arrest rights within their own state. The FBI and other federal law enforcement agencies don’t usually want to get involved with people that flee a court appearance. To make up for this gap, the courts ruled a very long time ago that private citizens called bounty hunters could do almost anything necessary to capture people that flee and get them back to the appropriate jurisdiction.

As you can imagine, bounty hunters need to be what most of us call badasses. They often come from the military or regular law enforcement. They have to be badasses because their job description consists of kidnapping murderers, rapists, and other serious felons by stalking them and then taking them down suddenly often alone or just one other person. After the person is caught, they may be completely responsible for kidnapping them and getting them back to the state where the crime was committed before law enforcement can take over.

The U.S. has the concept of extradition between states but it can be slow and the whole purpose of a bounty hunter is to get the person to the right court as fast as possible for cash reasons.

13

The SCOTUS case is [Taylor v. Taintor](Bounty hunter - Wikipedia Taylor v. Taintor) and it dates back to 1872. As far as I know it has not been overturned.

14

From what I understand, and please correct me if I’m wrong, things vary wildly from state to state. Here in Massachusetts, I believe, we don’t have bounty hunters, but we do license “constables” to perform similar tasks. Even then, though, they’re not quite bounty hunters as exist elsewhere.

15

[QUOTE=Shagnasty]
You are right to be confused about bounty hunters. They are a quirk of U.S. law and actually have much greater powers than real law enforcement officers for arrest purposes.
[/QUOTE]

What you describes in the rest of your post is pretty interesting. I wouldn’t have believed it. Had I seen it in a movie, for instance, I would have assumed it was just license on the part of the director.
It really feels deeply wrong that an almost random citizen would be granted so much power, and even more power than a police officer.
It seems also very wrong that the main reason such a system is used is because actual law enforcement couldn’t care less about arresting fugitives . Is it really the case? It would cost money to hire more federal agents, so let’s some Anybodys break doors at 4 a.m. and abduct citizens instad? That’s appaling.
What happens, exactly, when they break the wrong door at 4 a.m.? Also, what would happen if it’s the right door, but the fugitive kills them, and states it was self-defense? After all, even if he’s a fugitive, he has no reason to assume that the door breaker isn’t a criminal. Finally has the fugitive any right not to be driven across state borders? Could he call a police officer, for instance, or would he have the right to fight back to avoid being deported?

Speaking of movies, I’m surprised that these “bounty hunters” don’t appear in them or in TV series.

16

[QUOTE=clairobscur]
I’m surprised that these “bounty hunters” don’t appear in them or in TV series.
[/QUOTE]

Is that a joke?
Dog the Bounty Hunter

17

[QUOTE=clairobscur]

It seems also very wrong that the main reason such a system is used is because actual law enforcement couldn’t care less about arresting fugitives . Is it really the case? It would cost money to hire more federal agents, so let’s some Anybodys break doors at 4 a.m. and abduct citizens instad? That’s appaling.

[/quote]

That’s not the main reason why they exist. They exist because bail contracts are private business arrangements that arose in colonial and wild-west times before standing constabularies were common, and they simply never went away (in most places.) They are a lot more common in the sparsely populated western states; as waterj2 notes, some states use law enforcement agencies for this task.

They would be civilly and possibly criminally liable.

Self-defense isn’t usually a valid defense against someone making a lawful arrest.

You don’t have the right to fight someone making a lawful arrest. I dunno about a phone calls.

Dog the Bounty Hunter, Jackie Brown, Domino,* The Bounty Hunter, Blade Runner, Midnight Run, etc.
[sub]*Worst movie since Leonard Part VI[/sub]

18

[QUOTE=Thrash the Almighty]
Is that a joke?
Dog the Bounty Hunter
[/QUOTE]

Clairobscur lives in Paris, so it should not be surprising that she has not heard of a program on the American cable channel A&E.

The New York Times recently published an article about bail bondsmen and bounty hunters, which are unheard of in almost all other countries. It mentions that it’s a system that’s disliked by much of the legal profession. The article says, “Most of the legal establishment, including the American Bar Association and the National District Attorneys Association, hates the bail bond business, saying it discriminates against poor and middle-class defendants, does nothing for public safety, and usurps decisions that ought to be made by the justice system.” It also mentions that Illinois, Kentucky, Oregon and Wisconsin have banned private bail bondsmen.

19

[QUOTE=Dewey Finn]
It mentions that it’s a system that’s disliked by much of the legal profession. The article says, “Most of the legal establishment, including the American Bar Association and the National District Attorneys Association, hates the bail bond business, saying it discriminates against poor and middle-class defendants, does nothing for public safety, and usurps decisions that ought to be made by the justice system.” It also mentions that Illinois, Kentucky, Oregon and Wisconsin have banned private bail bondsmen.
[/QUOTE]

For the record, I suspect their distaste comes from the fact that they have no control or authority over it rather than the practice itself. Of course, they don’t actually do the work of fixing the issue, so it’s essentially their own fault, but c’est la vie.

20

Note that some states have taken away a good part of the bail bondsman’s business by instituting a “bond or 10% cash deposit” policy by the courts. If the defendant can come up with the 10% cash, they can deposit that with the court rather than the bail bondsman, and they get it back when they show up for trial. They have a very strong motivation to go that route, rather than negotiate with a private bail bondsman if they can produce the cash. Presumably, those states are also committing to providing ample law enforcement personnel to catch bail jumpers.

As to why a deal like that doesn’t completely put commercial bail bondsmen out of business, note this from one of the “bail bond” ads that google has so kindly placed at the bottom of this page:

The commercial bondsmen may negotiate time payments for their 10%, at not-very-favorable interest rates, I would imagine.