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.

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Washington D.C. - The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) today released the findings of a recent Mason-Dixon poll showing that Florida voters strongly favor enacting a statewide law that would limit the use of their tax dollars to paying only for the release of indigent defendants who have been charged with a non-violent crime.  Statewide, 71% supported limiting the use of tax dollars, while 22% were opposed and 7% were undecided.

Currently, the Florida Legislature is considering Senate Bill 782 by Senator John Thrasher (R-St. Augustine) and House Bill 445 by Representative Chris Dorworth (R-Lake Mary), pertaining to changing Florida Statute, as it relates to the government-run pretrial release programs.  SB 782 and HB 445 requires that the defendant meet certain specified criteria in order to be eligible for pretrial release; narrows who is eligible for taxpayer-funded pretrial services/release programs; and moves more criminal offenders to a private, regulated and licensed bail system, while still allowing for the continued use of pretrial programs for non-violent, first-time, non-dangerous indigent offenders.

ALEC has made reforming government-run bail a priority and believes this legislation will benefit Floridians.

Support for the measure has widened to the Florida’s voters, as by the Mason-Dixon poll:

94% 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.

·     87% 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.

·     86% felt a criminal defendant that has been previously convicted of a violent crime should not be allowed to be released from jail using tax dollars, even if the court rules that they are indigent.

·     Only 15% of state voters were aware that 28 Florida counties allow criminals to be released from jail using taxpayer dollars instead of paying for their own release while they await trial.

• Support for the measure cuts across party lines, with 65% of Democrats, 77% of Republicans and 72% of independentsfavoring such a law.

ALEC’s Public Safety Task Force Director Michael Hough said, “It is clear that taxpayers do not want to be left on the hook to pay the bill for releasing potentially dangerous criminals from jail. Pretrial release agencies should strictly serve the indigent, and commercial bail does a better job of protecting the public from dangerous criminals, while saving taxpayer dollars.”

The poll was conducted by Mason-Dixon Polling & Research, Inc. of Washington, D.C. from March 23, 2010, through March 25, 2010, with a total of 625 registered Florida voters.  The margin of error is no more than plus or minus 4 percentage points. The poll is available here http://www.alec.org/am/pdf/cied/Mason-Dixon_poll.pdf

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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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