Archive for the ‘Florida Bail Bonds’ Category

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Handling a Warrant

Wednesday, April 24th, 2013

police-clipIf you find out that you have a warrant out for your arrest, the last thing you want to do is start thinking of ways that you can stay on the run. In fact, many people who have a warrant out for their arrest don’t even know it and aren’t on the run at all. There are generally ways that you can fix this without making the situation worse and, in many cases, without even spending a night in jail.

 

Contact the Authorities

 

Nobody has a general warrant out for their arrest. The warrant will have been issued by a given authority. For example, you may have a warrant for your arrest out in a given county, in a city or, in the worst-case scenario, a federal warrant. If the warrant for your arrest is for something minor, don’t expect a nightmare when you go into fix it. Most of the time, all it takes is money.

 

Contact the authority that issued the warrant and tell them that you want to resolve the warrant. This will generally involve paying any fines you have outstanding and, in some cases, paying late fees and other fees to resolve the warrant. After that, the warrant may be eliminated and you may be free to go on your way. You may also be given a court date and you want to make absolutely certain that you make it to that court date or they’re just going to issue another warrant and they’re going to be a lot more serious about it this time.

 

You may want to keep an eye out for amnesty events. Law enforcement agencies sometimes hold these for people who have warrants out and who genuinely want to resolve them but who are afraid of the penalties. With these events, law enforcement is sometimes able to waive the fees and other burdens on the people who have warrants out, allowing the whole thing to be taken care of in something of a win/win situation.

 

If You’re Jailed

 

You may end up getting thrown in jail if you have outstanding warrants. Don’t confuse this with getting thrown in prison. If you’re thrown in jail, it’s generally because they expect you to stay there until your court date rolls around. If the charge is minor, however, it’s very likely that they’re going to allow you to post bail. If you can’t afford the bail, contact the bail bondsman and they can put up a surety bond for a small percentage of the total bail required.

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Posted in Florida Bail Bonds, Warrants | Comments Off

Making Sure Your Bail Bond Is Exonerated

Tuesday, March 12th, 2013

If you have a need to get a bail bond, you have to make certain that you adhere to the conditions of the bond and that you do not violate them in any way. Most of the time, the requirements for your bail bond will be relatively simple: you simply have to show up in court whenever required. Here are some common mistakes that you can avoid that may end up with you back in jail waiting for your court date.

 

Examine the Requirements

 

Your Florida bail bond agent may place requirements on your bond that are designed to make certain that you do show up in court. Even though you may have absolutely no intention of violating your bail, people may do so innocently without realizing it.

 

The best thing to do is to communicate. A big part of communication is listening. When your bail bond agent tells you about any conditions that relate to your bail bond, make certain that you write them down and that you make every effort to adhere to them. They may vary depending upon the severity of the crime with which you are charged, your past criminal history and due to other factors. You have to be absolutely certain that you understand the terms of your bail bond and that you do not violate them.

 

Show Up

 

A bail bond agent is going to be every bit as amicable to excuses for not showing up to court as a judge is. That is to say, they’re not going to take any excuses. When you have a court date set, it is your legal obligation to show up on that day for whatever reason the court called you in. If you happen to miss court, it will be considered a violation of your bail bond and, at that point, the bail bond agent is put in a very bad situation.

 

The agreement the bail bond agent has with the courts is that, if you fail to show up to court, the bail bond agent has to pay the full cost of your bond. As you might suspect, your bail bond agent isn’t going to be too happy about that. This will inevitably result in your arrest, getting thrown back into jail and sitting out your time before your court date in jail. Of course, it’s quite likely that any judge you go to face is going to take into account the fact that you didn’t make it to your court proceeding, as well.

 

It Can Work

 

A bail bondsman is not there to try to throw you back in jail. In fact, what they’re doing is giving you an opportunity to take care of everything you need to take care of outside of jail so that you are ready for your trial when it arrives. If you stick within the system, to the requirements of the bail bond and make certain to keep in contact with the bail bondsman if you have any questions whatsoever, you’ll get the full benefit of what a surety bond offers.

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Posted in Florida Bail Bonds, Indemnitor's | Comments Off

Here’s How to Get a Bail Bond in 3 Easy Steps

Monday, January 7th, 2013

Fortunately, in this day and age, technology has developed to the point that you can get a Bail Bond with a phone call and a credit card.

 

Yes, buying a Bail Bond is that easy and you can do it in just 3 easy steps.

 

  1. Call 877-422-4599.

 

  1. Provide information on the detainee and the arrest.

 

  1. Provide payment information.

 

 

Call 877-422-4599

 

You actually don’t need to shop around — honest.  Here’s why:

 

  • The law requires that all Bail Bond Companies charge the exact same fee.  There is no price shopping – there are no negotiations.

 

  • The Bail Bond Companies we recommend are experienced, licensed, have access to huge sums for bail, operate 24/7/365, have highly systemized electronic processes, and will answer your questions for free.

 

 

Provide Information on Detainee and Arrest

 

No worries if you don’t have all the information the jail needs.  You provide all you can and we’ll research to find the rest.

 

  • Detainee name, date of birth, address, and criminal history.

 

  • Location of either the jail or the arrest.

 

  • Bail amount.

 

 

Provide Payment Information

 

You are welcome to pay for the Bail Bond with cash or a credit card, money order, or personal check.

 

All Florida county and state cases require a bond fee of 10% of the bail amount; however, if the case requires a federal or immigration bond, the fee is 15% of the bail amount.

 

If you don’t know whether the case is a county, state, federal, or immigration case, we’ll find out for you.  We’ll also figure out the corresponding 10% or 15% statutory Bail Bond fee – at no charge and no obligation.

 

 

Thanks to Technology

 

Thanks to technology, you can purchase a bail bond from the comfort of your own couch and YOU NO LONGER HAVE TO:

 

  • Wait until 10am Monday morning to access enough money to post the full bail.

 

  • Go to the jail, deal with the jailers, and fill out paperwork.

 

  • Go to the bail bond office.

 

  • Wait – wait – wait to get your loved one out of jail.

 

  • Wonder whether there is a warrant out for your arrest.

 

  • Wait to get answers to your questions.

 

 

Where to Get a Bail Bond

 

We only approve high quality, efficient, and effective Bail Bond Services.

 

Call anytime – day or night – and we’ll get you connected with one of our top notch Bond Services.   Call 877-422-4599 now.

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Verdict Out On Bail Bond Industry: Judges Agree that Commercial Bail is Most Effective Form of Pretrial Release

Thursday, October 4th, 2012

As part of our ongoing efforts to promote understanding of the bail industry throughout the country, our team attended the American Judges Association Conference in New Orleans, Louisiana earlier this week.

 

We spent time talking with judges from all over the country about the bail bond industry and the role that it plays in their specific states and counties. During the two day conference, we handed out several hundred “I Love My Judge” buttons as well as fielded a two page survey to gain insights into judges’ perceptions of the bail bond industry and its role in the criminal justice system. Much like the recent survey conducted amongst Sheriffs at this years’ National Sheriffs’ Association Conference, the results shed a lot of light on the reality of the bail industry and dispel many myths and stereotypes that currently exist about this relatively unknown but extremely important industry.

 

The following are the results of the survey:
- 90% said bail plays an important role in the criminal justice system (70% said very
important)

 

- 37% described agents as helpful, 27% as professional… Intimidating was next with
20%

 

- 96% felt confident that a defendant when released on a bail bond would show up for
court (23% were extremely confident)

 

- 30% said that when a defendant is released OR or through a pretrial services agency
that they had little to no confidence in their return (70% somewhat confident)…
None replied extremely confident

 

- When asked how effective bail agents were at getting defendants to appear 86% said
effective with 33% of those saying extremely effective

 

- When asked to compare bail with OR/pretrial in terms of most effective…60% said
bail (secured release) vs. 6% saying unsecured release.

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Posted in Florida Bail Bonds, Florida Bail Legislation, Nationwide Bail Bonds, Pretrial Services | Comments Off

Fugitives Getting Help from Taxpayers

Monday, August 20th, 2012

View more videos at: http://nbcmiami.com.

Posted in Federal Bail Bonds, Florida Bail Bonds, Florida Bail Legislation, Fugitive Recovery, Nationwide Bail Bonds | Comments Off

Let’s Set the Record Straight

Thursday, December 15th, 2011

The Pretrial Justice Institute is distributing a webinar again basically calling for local governments to abolish money bail and instead institute government-run bail programs that are more lenient and apt to let criminals out of jail for free.

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Here are some of their arguments:

Uncertainty about release since no in/out decision is made

  • 47% of felony defendants who have money bail set are released, 53% stay in jail
  • Percent of felony defendants who have money bail set and who are released ranges from 16% to 85%
  • Defendants with access to the money can purchase their release, those without cannot

An “out” decision is made – no uncertainty about release.

  • Release is not dependent upon the defendant’s access to money.

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A letter we posted from Jerry Watson a couple of weeks ago refuted this well. In it he said, “The key plank in the platform of today’s Pretrial Release Agency’s campaign to justify their existence is their attempt to assign the cause of jail overcrowding to how the bail system operates. They claim that adjustments making it easier for persons to be released from pretrial custody would automatically solve overpopulation in the jail. Such an approach is fatally flawed and should not even be considered for very good reasons.

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When a person is arrested and the court is making its bail decision, how many people are already in the jail should not even be a consideration. The Pretrial Release champions concoct theories dedicated to the purpose of “striking the proper balance between bail amounts, jail population, and community safety.” One of those three, jail population, doesn’t belong. While a defendant’s bail amount and the court’s concern for community safety are inextricably connected and should certainly drive the court’s decision, jail population should not be a part of that equation.

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Considering existing jail population as an incident to the setting of bail in a new case is fraught with legal improprieties. The Eighth Amendment to our United States Constitution simply says that there shall be no excessive bail. When asked exactly what that means, the courts have consistently told us that bail is “excessive” if it is set at an amount higher than that reasonably calculated to ensure the defendant’s return to court as directed.”

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Furthermore, jail populations in America have actually been declining. In fact, according to the Department of Justice, the number of individuals in jail has fallen from 785,536 in 2008 to 748,728 in 2010. Nationally, jail populations are at their lowest levels since 2005. The jail capacity rate is ten percentage points lower today than it was in 2006, falling from 96.3 percent to only 86.4 percent.

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This is attributable to a number of factors including a falling crime rate and an increased use of private-sector bail. From the Department of Justice we know the use of commercial bail bonds has increased from 25 percent of releases in 1990 to over 40 percent in 2004. More people are contracting with private-sector bail agents to secure their release from jail, and the system does a good job of swiftly and safely releasing defendants from jail prior to their trial. If PJI’s criticism about the unfairness of commercial bail was correct, then jail populations would have increased and not decreased.

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For years government bureaucrats have promoted the idea of eliminating bail bondsmen and encouraging the government to make the decision to release criminals on their own recognizance or on a government-issued deposit bonds. The result of this government-run system has been predictable: a large number of criminals failed to appear in court and government officials failed to track them down.

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Source

Posted in Florida Bail Bonds, Florida Bail Legislation, Nationwide Bail Bonds, Pretrial Services | Comments Off

Getting someone out of jail fast

Tuesday, August 23rd, 2011

If you want to bail someone out of jail as quickly as possible, the internet is your best friend. You need to go straight away and find a bail bond agency online, instead of spending hours looking in phone books or classified ads. You should take a quick look at a few different bail bond agencies and find one that you like. As long as they have a good website and are fairly transparent about their business, you should be fine. Your next step is to call them and tell them that you want to get the process underway. They will ask you for some obvious details, and you will need to provide some sort of proof of identification, so make sure you have that beforehand otherwise you’ll have an inevitable delay.

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Another thing to make sure you have with you beforehand is the 10% premium that is payable in order to get the process underway. You don’t need to pay this in cash, but you’ll need to be able provide payment before anything can move any further, so make sure you can afford it and you know how you are going to pay for it. You should also consider what you are going to use as collateral to cover the rest of the bail amount – make sure you can provide full collateral otherwise there will be delays as the bail bond agency tries to help you make up the full amount through collateral.

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Bailing someone out of jail in a matter of hours is perfectly possible, and you should be able to navigate the process without too many difficulties. Although speed is obviously important to you, you need to make sure you remain reasonably calm at all times, otherwise you might make a rash decision that you regret in the future.

Posted in Florida Bail Bonds, Nationwide Bail Bonds | 2,159 Comments »

A Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing

Thursday, March 24th, 2011
Please take the time to read this update from Bail Works.  How is this possible?  How can it be that a fellow Florida surety agent can back members who oppose limiting taxpayer funded pre-trial release.  Your comments are much appreciated on this subject.
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Tuesday SB 372, a bill to limit those who are eligible for government-funded pretrial release, was temporarily postponed in a Senate committee. The sponsor, Senator Ellyn Bogdanoff was unavoidably detained in another hearing.
The postponement did not discourage some heated testimony from the bill’s opponents. Most notable were Broward County Commissioner Stacy Ritter (who called the bill “The Bail Bondsmen Relief Act”) as well as Pinellas County Sheriff Jim Coats.
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It is noteworthy that almost none of the testimony was about SB 372 nor about who should qualify for pretrial release, nor the eligibility requirements being proposed. Instead, testimony was largely a diatribe about the ills of private surety bail and how government funded pretrial release is superior.
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The assertions made by the bureaucrat critics of the bail industry were almost fictionalized with numerous qualifiers like “it is estimated” or “sometimes”. And much of the commentary were road swipes at the entire industry.
For example, Sheriff Coats stated:
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“the only place a criminal justice system or a liberty decision is governed by a profit-making entity that will or will not take your business is the bail bond industry…”
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Sheriff Coats went on to say that some in our industry were actively opposing this measure and were standing with him. Standing with Sheriff Coats were representatives of the Florida Association of Counties and another surety agent.
One further note; it is one thing for there to be disagreements between colleagues on approach or on the merits of a particular piece of legislation or even whether or not to support such legislation…but the fact that a representative of the surety industry stood shoulder to shoulder yesterday with Stacy Ritter and Jim Coats while they bashed our industry and maligned our profession is both disheartening and disappointing.
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The role of sureties is not merely to support its agents and advocate for their success but to honor the bail profession and a system that has stood the test of time.
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Tuesday was merely a postponement of a new law that will help preserve the bail profession, but one surety agent’s overt support of one who demeans its very existence is an insult to the agents who have lived and died in the line of duty.

Posted in Florida Bail Bonds, Florida Bail Legislation, Nationwide Bail Bonds, Pretrial Services | 2,030 Comments »

Mason-Dixon Poll Finds Florida Voters Oppose Use of Tax Dollars for Bail

Thursday, March 17th, 2011

WASHINGTON, D.C. (March 16, 2011) – The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) today released the findings of a recent Mason-Dixon poll showing that Florida voters oppose using taxpayer dollars to bail criminals out of jail, as opposed to defendants posting their own bail. Statewide, 71 percent opposed using tax dollars to bail criminals out of jail, while 18 percent supported and 11 percent were undecided.

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ALEC’s Public Safety Resident Fellow Michael Hough said, “Last November voters sent a clear message at the polls that they wanted elected officials to cut wasteful government spending so it’s no surprise that voters so strongly opposed this criminal welfare program. Floridians are strongly opposed to taxpayer provided bail bonds for criminals who can afford to pay for their release from jail.”

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Floridians’ opposition is reflected in the poll results:

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• 78 percent felt criminal defendants who have failed to appear in court on a previous offense should not be allowed to be released from jail using tax dollars.

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• 75 percent felt that if a criminal defendant can afford to pay their own bail for release from jail, they should not be allowed to be released from jail using tax dollars.

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• Support for theses measure cuts across party lines with 79 percent of Republicans, 65 percent of Democrats, and 67 percent of Independents opposing the use of taxpayer dollars to bail non-indigent offenders out of jail.

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The poll was conducted by Mason-Dixon Polling & Research, Inc. of Washington, D.C. from March 3, 2011, through March 5, 2011, with a total of 625 registered Florida voters.  The margin of error is no more than plus or minus 4 percentage points at the 95% confidence level.

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ALEC has made reforming government-run bail a priority and supports policies that protect the taxpayer dollar and public safety. For more information please contact Michael Hough, mhough@alec.org.
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The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) is the nation’s largest nonpartisan individual membership association of state legislators, with nearly 2,000 state legislators across the nation and more than 100 alumni members in Congress. ALEC’s mission is to promote free markets, individual liberty, and federalism through its model legislation in the states.

Posted in Florida Bail Bonds | 664 Comments »

Choosing a bail bondsman

Monday, November 15th, 2010

Choosing a Florida bail bondsman really doesn’t have to be that difficult. It used to be, granted, but it’s now an incredibly easy process that almost anyone could do. All you’ve got to do is make some quick searches on the internet and soon you’ll have a shortlist of hundreds of different bail bond agencies who could all help you. What to do with that shortlist is another matter, so let’s try to see if we can narrow your choices down until you’ve only got a few excellent bail bond agencies left.

You need to make sure any bail bond agency that you are considering has an excellent website. It doesn’t have to be flashy, but it should be professional, and it should provide you with a great deal of information about their business. If they aren’t giving you any information, and their website looks like it’s just been thrown together in 5 minutes, then you should just cross them off your list.

The next thing to do is find out how to contact them. If you can talk to them on the phone, do so, while if they only offer you the option of e-mailing them, they might not be for you. The good thing about talking on the phone is that you get instant answers to your questions, and you can tell just from that short conversation whether they take their business seriously. It’s amazing how some businesses completely neglect customer service when it comes to talking to people on the phone, and if you aren’t satisfied with the conversation you have, you won’t be satisfied with the services they provide you.

Once you’ve spoken to them on the phone, you’re going to want to narrow your list down even further. Keep looking at their websites, and if you can be bothered, do some searching on the internet for their specific business. Try to find reviews or testimonials, or even just news, about their business. If you find anything negative, you have to weigh up whether you believe it, whether you think it’s serious, and whether you think the bail bond agency is going to help you.

Just remember, people write bad reviews on the internet for companies they’ve never even dealt with, so make sure that you take anything written online with a pinch of salt. Of course, if there’s an overwhelming feeling of negativity about the agency, then your best bet is just to move on to the next agency.

If you ignore any of these little tips, you’re probably going to end up regretting it. The biggest mistake people make in the bail bonds industry is ignoring their gut instinct, and making rash decisions when it comes to choosing a bail bond agency.  If you make the right choice, the process will be a complete breeze and you won’t have to worry about mistakes or extra hassle. Don’t forget to be sceptical about everything, and only choose an agency that you personally are happy with, not just one that has good reviews.

Posted in Florida Bail Bonds, Nationwide Bail Bonds | 1,611 Comments »

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