Posts Tagged ‘Florida Bail Bonds’

Co-signing a Bail Bond

Monday, June 14th, 2010

Co-signing a bail bond essentially means that you are the responsible party and you are liable to pay the full amount of the bail bond if forfeiture occurs. It’s a pretty big deal, but you shouldn’t get too hung up about the actual signing of the bail bond and the feeling of “responsibility”. In these cases, your main responsibility is to yourself. You owe it to yourself to make sure that nothing goes wrong and that you are not forced to submit large amounts of collateral or money to pay for something that is not your fault. If the arrestee skips out on their bail, then you are liable to pay, and so you owe it to yourself to make sure that does not happen.

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You can do this by keeping track of the arrestee and making sure that you know where they are at all times, especially in the days leading up to their appearance in court. People make stupid decisions sometimes and it can be very easy for a defendant to panic and bolt when the court date is looming and they are worried about their future. It’s your job to ensure this doesn’t happen, so you need to do everything in your power to stop that. Talk to the defendant and make sure they understand their responsibility to you, and how much more trouble they will be in if they don’t fulfill the conditions of their bail bond.

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Co-Signing a Florida bail bond is a big deal if you are taking a risk with your money, which is a bad idea. Most of the time, however, you won’t be risking it because you should be able to trust the person you are bailing out of jail. If you can’t trust them, you have to decide whether it’s a risk you are willing to take.

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Posted in Florida Bail Bonds, Florida Bail Legislation, Indemnitor's | No Comments »

Sean R. Thomas: Stop ‘catch and release’

Thursday, April 29th, 2010

By Sean R. Thomas
Special to The Sun

Published: Thursday, April 29, 2010 at 6:01 a.m.

For the past 15 years I have worked in Alachua County as a bail agent, and I have posted thousands of bail bonds for defendants. Using Court Services’ own formula, that translates to tens of millions of dollars in savings of incarceration costs for the taxpayer.

I have never received any taxpayer money from Alachua County. However, I have paid county bond forfeitures, totaling $29,000, for four defendants I could never locate.

That’s right, four of my bond clients in 15 years could not be found! I would challenge any pretrial release program to match that record.

The bottom line is this: bail bonding works. The reason is accountability — we get people to show up (or we pay big money), and unlike pretrial release programs, we will locate, arrest and return bond skips to jail, and we do this far better than any tax-based program around.

The courts, sheriff, state attorney and county commissioners can make all the arguments in the world for these public option programs, but the bottom line is, we taxpayers pay dearly for them!

It amazes me that as county and state budgets are strained to the point of busting, we sit here fighting over legislation that pits government’s expenditures in the millions vs. private tax-free alternative-bail, which has worked very well in this country since its inception.

Pretrial programs are being advertised as a cheap solution to expensive incarceration, and the claim that only low-risk offenders are put in them is simply not the truth.

Pretrial release takes taxpayer money and uses it to fund the release of criminals back on the streets with absolutely no guarantee that they will ever come back to court.

These pretrial programs are funded by the same general fund that directly competes for money that could be used for police, fire, teachers, etc.

Pretrial programs have become a way for the court to rationalize releasing huge numbers of people from custody.

Pretrial has this nice PR platform saying that they can supervise individuals for a quarter the cost, but in truth, we taxpayer are spending millions for them to “supervise” just a few thousand people, and of those, a huge percentage will fail to return for court, or will violate some pretrial program regulation and be returned to jail.

Alachua county has thousands of warrants on people wanted for not coming to court (14,000 active warrants at last count, and climbing every day). The vast majority of theses individuals were released on their own recognizance by judges, or were recoged into one of these “supervised” programs.

It was no surprise to me that the only county in this part of Florida to see an increase in crime was Alachua County. What is surprising is that neither the sheriff nor the state attorney, nor do many of our county’s judges, seem to have any problem with our judicial system’s “catch and release” philosophy.

Sean R. Thomas lives in Gainesville.

Source

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Posted in Florida Bail Bonds, Florida Bail Legislation, Gainesville Bail Bonds, Pretrial Services | 3 Comments »

The easy way to bail someone out of Florida jail

Monday, March 29th, 2010

The easiest way to bail someone out of jail is to talk to a highly qualified bail bonds agency. These agencies deal with thousands of cases very similar to yours every year, and they’ll know exactly what needs to be done in order to bail that person out of jail. They will be able to help you make quick decisions and should be able to handle your application smoothly and quickly. If you choose a good Tampa bail bonds agency, they will be able to bail someone out of jail within a matter of hours. If you don’t, however, you could end up with a whole multitude of problems and the process could take days rather than just hours.

A big bail bond agency will be able to give you complete peace of mind. It’s a bit like putting the whole bail bonds process on autopilot – you just give them the necessary details, and they do all the hard work for you. You can often find high quality bail bond agencies online, and you’ll be able to talk to someone from that agency before you begin working with them. Be sure to explain your situation and ask any questions that you might have; if you are happy with the answers they give you, the chances are you’re going to be happy with the service they provide when you work with them.

Make sure to stay calm throughout the process and not make too much of a fuss. There is nothing worse for an agency than someone who is panicking and impatient while they are working hard to process the bail bond. Good agencies will help you relax and give you peace of mind, but don’t rely on this, they are often too busy and it’s only those that truly care about customer service who will help you in this area.

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Posted in Florida Bail Bonds, Tampa Bail Bonds | No Comments »

Pasco County Eliminates Pretrial Release

Wednesday, March 3rd, 2010

Overview
SB 782 (Thrasher) and HB 445 (Dorworth) put modest limits on who is eligible for government
funded pretrial release (PTR) programs. Opponents of this bill have said that these limits would
increase the county jail population. This is not true.

Pasco County Findings
Due to budget constraints, in 2007 Pasco County completely eliminated its government run PTR
program, saving taxpayers $348,000 per year. In 2008, the county’s jail population increase
was a negligible 5 bed days per year (an increase from 1,262 to 1,267)…a less than 0.4% increase.
However, when considering the population growth of the county during that same time, there was
a net decrease of 2.2% in per capita bed days. Per capita occupancy went DOWN, not up!

Sources: Florida Department of Corrections, Index to Statistics and Publication; US Census population estimates.
“Due to budget cuts, we completely cut out the pretrial release program in Pasco County.
As a result, we saved taxpayers nearly $350,000 last year and haven’t seen any
noticeable change in our jail population. I have had great success in doing away with the
pretrial release program.”
–Pasco County Sheriff Bob White
“We have had great success with the Pre-trial Program being eliminated in Pasco
County.”
–Pasco County Commissioner Michael Cox

Conclusion
The complete elimination of the taxpayer financed pretrial release program in Pasco County had
no significant impact on jail population. If any impact must be drawn, one could conclude that
eliminating the program actually reduced the per capita jail population while saving taxpayers
nearly $350,000 per year.

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Posted in Florida Bail Bonds, Pretrial Services | 1 Comment »

What is Pre-Trial Release

Monday, March 1st, 2010

We found a video that talks about Pre-trial release and how ineffective it really is.  Pre-trial release is nothing more than another government program that costs taxpayers money.  Please watch the video and leave your comments.

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Posted in Florida Bail Bonds, Pretrial Services | 1 Comment »