If you’ve been arrested and charged, the judge may require you to post bail. Essentially, you will deposit money with the courts to ensure that you show up for court dates. If you don’t show up, you’ll lose the bail money and could face additional charges.
You might also get hit with a no arrest bond. This means you haven’t been thrown in jail, but the court is still going to require that you post bail money to ensure that you show up for court dates. How much is a non arrest bond? It can be as expensive as a bond resulting from an arrest.
You might also wonder, what happens if I get arrested while out on bail? You could be thrown in jail and your bond revoked.
What happens if you can’t post bail? Unfortunately, this could mean that you must remain in jail until your court date. However, another option is to use a bail bond service.
In this case, the bail bond agent will post the money for you. In exchange, they will charge a fee. If the client then skips town or doesn’t show up for a court date, the bail bond agency could send a bounty hunter after you.
Bail bondsmen are in the business of bailing out those who cannot afford bail. They act as sureties and collect bail bonds. If you are mulling over the bail bonds meaning, they are a financial guarantee of your appearance in court after bail. A lawyer will argue your bail argument points, and a bondsman comes into play when you cannot afford bail but at a fee of 10%. The bail bonds companies will pay the bond amount provided the defendant shows up at the trial.
Once the bondsman posts bail, the client is free to leave. If the suspect skips the court, they will pass the liability to the bail bondsman for failure to appear, and the courts will void the bond. The bail bondsman will forfeit the cash to the courts and engage the bounty hunter for help in recovering from the suspect. Bounty hunters often work with police or sheriff’s departments, but are bail bondsman law enforcement officers? Bail bondsmen are not enforcement officers, and they don’t have any legal authority to arrest or hold someone in jail. They’re simply insurance against the defendant’s failure to appear in court.
When it comes to dealing with being in prison there is little more that you want to do but get free. Bail bonding services are able to do just that. There are bond out of jail rules that make it possible for you to leave jail and await your trial in your own home. The first rule is that you do have to be present at the hearing that is set in order for the bail money to be returned to the bail bond company or individual. Bond status meaning refers to if the bond is fulfilled or not.
When you bond to get out of jail you sign a contract that allows you the freedom to leave jail and go to your own home. In most cases, the rules are that you cannot leave or go further than a set amount of miles from your home, you have to show up for trial to make sure the bond money return is possible, and you cannot re-offend while you are waiting to go to trial and settle the case at hand. Bail bond services are a fantastic way to get out of jail and to really build your case without having to spend your time waiting in a prison cell.
These days, bail bonding is a big business. In 2006, the industry collected about $2.5 billion in fees — and this is only increasing with each passing year. Essentially, bail bond services act as lenders that help people get out of jail, whether they’ve had one too many drinks before getting behind the wheel or they’ve been accused of breaking and entering. While the fees may be sometimes high (often 10% of the bail amount) the reality is that these companies taken on a fairly large risk. If people skip out on their court appearances, the money is forfeited and the bail bond company will rarely see it back.
So: How Does it Work?
Courts need a way of making sure people show up to their trial days. You’ve probably seen this happen on numerous court shows — the judge will set a bail rate that the individual needs to pay. If the person fails to show up on the appointed day (or fails to reschedule appropriately) the fee is forfeited to the courts.
This number can often be quite high — it is meant to serve as a real incentive for attending court. If the number is too low, some people might simply accept the loss of a month or two of wages and fail to appear. When a suspect works with a bail bondsman, they only need to pay that 10% of the bail cost — the rest is covered by the bondsman, who will receive the money back once the suspect attends their court date. This can be the easiest option for people who may not have thousands of dollars laying around.
If people decide to flee anyway and have taken out a loan from a bail bond service, then the bail bond agency has to pay the court for the fees owed.
What Happens if You Do Flee?
Have you ever wondered who, exactly, pays bounty hunters to find people? In many cases, it’s bondsmen who have assumed the risk of a suspect they paid to get out of jail — only for the suspect to then flee. Finding the fleeing suspect is usually the first route these companies will take, and hiring a bounty hunter is often the best way to collect at least some of the money. If this is not possible, the bail bondsmen will go after the fugitive’s left behind assets, if any exist. This can include cars and even homes.
The Average Person Does Pay Up
It’s not very often that the services of a bounty hunter are actually needed by bail bond services. You might be surprised to learn that about 50% of American men will be arrested at least once during their lifetime. In the grand majority of cases, people will choose to go to trial rather than become a fugitive of the law for the rest of their life.
