This question occurred to me while reading a thread on being held before a trial.
Since bail bondsmen take 10% of the total, wouldn’t it be financially beneficial to just use some other kind of credit to pay the bond? Even a usurious credit card at 20+% will be a better deal if your trial is only a few months away. Is the average wait for a criminal trial longer than a few months?
Plus, if you do decide to make a break for it, the credit card companies won’t hire a bounty hunter.
Will the court take a credit card? I know they won’t take a check. Or did you mean cash advance?
If you use a bail bondsman, you only need to come up with 10% of the bail (which, as you say, you don’t get back). If you’re using a credit card, you need to have available credit for the full amount. At the $1000 level, it’s certainly possible. $10,000? Some people. $100,000? Not many have that much credit available. And, I can’t imagine a court is going to be thrilled with the idea of Mr. Charged-with-fraud putting any amount on a credit card to guarentee that he won’t run away…
Long story short, cash only on a cash bond, no credit, no checks. To use a credit card you’d have to get a cash advance and pay the full cash amount of the bond, and most criminal defendants (most people period, for that matter) don’t have the credit and resources to get together $10,000+ for bail. If they can, they need at least some of it for their lawyer, since they’re obviously not indigent. Even if you can raise the money somehow, it usually takes time, and most people want to get out of jail about 0.0000001 seconds after they are booked in. Calling a bondsman is generally the fastest and easiest way for most non-millionaires to get out of the pokey.
I suppose I was thinking of a cash advance.
I agree that few people are able to come up with $100K of credit. Are they really that much more likely to be able to come up with $10K cash?
Expanding the question a bit: What about other methods of financing the debt. Do people with homes generally take out an equity loan to cover a bond?
It just seems like going to a bondsman is a really bad deal, both for those who intend to make their court appearances and those who don’t.
Remember, bail isn’t always set at $100,000. There are plenty of people who could come up with $100 for the bondsman immediately but not the $1000 bail.
I’m not sure an equity loan would be much less expensive, between the interest and fees. And it would certainly take longer bail-bondsmen ususlly provide 24 hour service
I have heard of cases where relatives, friends, heck whole communities put up their homes as collateral in raising bail for some popular person. I assume that some bank somewhere takes that collateral and turns it into cash. So bail bondsmen are basicly just the easiest quickest way to get out of jail, not the only way.
/hijack
Oooooh I HATE those commercials for “Bad Boys Bail Bonds”.
'Cause your momma wants you home!
Ugggggghhhh. Ugly, ugly momma. Who’d wanna go home to that?
/h
Please continue. 
what if you were arrested for credit card fraud?
Someone should correct me if I’m wrong, but its my understanding some of these
property bonds are just that–simply potential liens not turned into money. After all the court isn’t per se interested in the money, its only used as a motivational technique to encourage the accused to show up for a court appearance.
Of course, if the suspect doesn’t show up, the bond agreement might require repayment or taking the property in question.