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Comment by developer1 | Hacker News Reader

I sympathize with your situation, but am confused by "I am out $3,000". Do you not get bail money back when your presence in court is concluded? I always thought bail was a deposit, not a payment. You only lose your bail money if you don't show up when required, no?

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If I were to post the actual full bail ~33,000 myself -- I "get it back" - but it is legal for them to keep the full bail amount 1 Year Plus 1 Day before they return it to me...

Using a bail bondsman I pay some fee (could be negotiated) but in my case was 10%

Since I paid the bail bondsman to post a 33,000 bond on my behalf - I pay him 3,300 up front. I do not get this back - regardless of the outcome of the case... however if I resolve it at the arraignment they refund ~10% at some ambiguous future date.

I should be able to bill the city for this given they had no charges and no evidence.

Laws vary by state but basically it amounts to: Bail was too expensive/risky so he paid a fee to a bondsman to get him out. A bond is a guarantee provided by a third party, the bondsman, that you will appear in court. It is usually some fraction of your actual bail, like 10%. So if we assume 10% and $3,000 paid to the bondsman, then his bail was probably $30,000. If that's correct then GP's alternative would have been to post $30k with the police until the conclusion of his/her case.

>A bond is a guarantee provided by a third party, the bondsman, that you will appear in court.

How can bondsmen stay in business? I have no idea what the turn up rate of appearing in court is, but I doubt it's 100%. So how are they allowed to stay in business if just one person they bailed out fails to appear in court?

If I understand it correctly, a warrant is filed, and then it's no longer their problem--they are, in effect, a hapless victim of the now at-large criminal! :|

No, it's a problem for them. The bondsman or their insurer is out the amount of the bail.

Ah, I stand corrected. If it goes to insurer, though, is it still a problem?

Yes, an insurer isn't going to pay many of these claims before they cancel your insurance, and or your insurance costs will go up quickly to the point where you cannot remain profitable.

In this case, if the OP failed to show up in court, the bondsman would be out the $30,000. The bondsman will then hire (or, just as likely, act as himself) a bounty hunter in order to track down the defendant and drag him back to the jurisdiction and recover their money.

They can also sue any indemnitors or guarantors who were party to the bail arrangement to try to recover their loss.

Basically 90% of being a profitable bondsman is being good at skip tracing in order to keep your losses low

They stay in business by making sure their clients make it to their court date, or by at least knowing the whereabouts of the clients so that they, or a bounty hunter (that the bondsman would hire), or the police can take them into custody. They can also go after bail jumpers in civil court (place liens on property).

The OP article mentions a peculiarity of the economics of the business in that many bondsmen won't touch small bail amounts because there isn't enough profit in it for the risk. So, it has the effect that people sometimes sit in jail for very low level offenses while people charged with more serious crimes get bonded out.

>So how are they allowed to stay in business if just one person they bailed out fails to appear in court?

The bondsman has to go and get their client and turn them in, or reimburse the amount of the bail. http://smallbusiness.chron.com/bail-bond-companies-work-4645...

If you get a bail bond, you pay the bondsman 10% of the total amount, and they front the entire bail amount. When you show up for court, they get the full amount.

The 10% you paid ($3,000 in this case) is basically a vig for the service the bondsman provides in fronting the money.

In many areas, part of the licensing for bail bonds doesn't require the bondsman to front the entire bail. They're basically given credit by the court that it will only become due if you fail to appear (and then there's the whole skip tracing aspect). Whereas you as a private citizen have to front the entire amount.

Now how that's figured at the back end (escrow of a general fund, or 'proof of ability to pay' or just 'sure, why not') is indicative of this being just one part of the racket. Why is a bail bondsman allowed to just promise the court they'll pay if you fail to appear, but you are given no such leeway, despite, in theory, being innocent at that point?

Probably for the same kind of reason that people can take out life-insurance policies on themselves much more easily than on others.

The court assumes that the bail bondsman's incentive for you to skip town is non-existent, whereas your incentive to skip town is, statistically speaking, much higher.

> Do you not get bail money back when your presence in court is concluded?

If you post the full bail yourself, yes, but he said he'd paid a bail bond. If you can't post the full bail yourself (say, it's $30k) then you go to a bail bondsman and they pay the full bail for you - in exchange for a fee, usually 10% of your bail. That fee is non-refundable.

Then if you skip out while you're on bail, they come find you and drag you back to court to get their money back.

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