Now that my case is over, the bond is exonerated, can I get my money back? Answer; Yes and No. If the bail bondsman provided the bail he charged a fee and that fee is non-refundable. If the person went directly to the court to post what is called a “Cash Bond”, then yes, all monies are returned.

There are two major types of ways to bail someone out who is currently being held in a jail, like the Los Angeles Jail. Listed below are the two types and explanations of both.

Bail Bonds Refund

1. Surety Bail: This is the most common of bail bonds types. This is where a person or defendant works directly with a bail bondsman. The normal bail bonds process goes like this. A call is made to the bail bonds company, either from the defendant in jail or from someone the defendant contacted. The bail agent looks up the defendants information on the local sheriff’s website, www.lasd.org for example. Here the bail bondsman can see the bail amount for the defendant, when the next court date is and sometimes the charges (PC 243 for example) against the defendant. Say the charge is domestic violence (most popular second to DUI) and the bail amount is set at $20,000. Anyone who works with a bail bondsman has to pay a fee. This fee is to pay the bail bondsman for the work involved to write the bail bonds, monitor the case as it goes to court, file the proper paperwork when the case is exonerated, notify all involved when the bond is exonerated, pay all the fees to the Surety that is financially backing the bail bondsman, and finally, provide a salary to the bail bondsman. The normal fee for the State of California is 10% of the total bail. So for a $20,000 bail bond the fee is $2000. This fee is paid by the defendant or indemnitor (person signing for the defendant). This fee is never refundable as it is a fee for working with the bail bonds company. Similar to a fee that is paid to get a loan. Once the bond has been posted at the jail the defendant could be released anywhere between 2 hours and 8 hours, depending on many factors; how busy the jail is, how long it takes to get fingerprint data back from the national database, and how fast the jail deputies decide to move the paperwork along. Once the defendant is freed from jail they return to the bail bonds office and sign the paperwork and are free to rejoin their normal life. Their respnsibilities are to attend all court dates and finish the case thus exonerating the bond. Once the bond is exonerated then all party’s responsibilities are also exonerated. Once this happens the most popular question we get is, “Can we get our money back?” It seems people believe that because the bond is no longer in play, that their 10% payment should no longer be valid either. But the reality is, its a fee paid to a company for a service. The service being bailing someone out of jail and taking on all the risks involved with that.
2. Cash Bail: This case is very rare as one rarely finds individuals with large amounts of money liquid enough to utilize quickly. Cash bail works like this: A person is arrested, booked, and bail is set according to the County’s Bail Schedule. For this example the bail amount will be $20,000. Cash bail is when someone takes the total bail amount, $20,000, in cash or money order, directly to the court. The court holds on to the $20,000 until the case is finished. Once the case is finished, the entire $20,000 is returned to the person who deposited the money. The end result is that there was no money charged for bailing someone out of jail for this scenario. It’s a great way to bail someone out of jail because in the end, they saved $2000, but not everyone has $20,000 in cash sitting around their house or financial entity.

Now that the bail bond is over, can we get our money back? If you worked with a bail bondsman, the answer is, “no” and if you paid for the bond yourself to the court, the answer is, “yes.” Its as simple as that.

These are the top four questions from every single call we have gotten from our customers. We interviewed the seven bail agents in both the Van Nuys Bail Bonds office and the Los Angeles Bail Bonds office and had them recall phone conversations for over the past few years and here are the top four questions and answers.

Top Bail Bonds Questions

1. How much does the bail bonds cost? If the bail bonds company is legitimate and follows all the rules beset upon them by the California Department of Insurance and the surety they work with, the cost is 10% of the total bail. So if the total bail is $20,000, then the fee that the bail bondsman is supposed to charge is $2000. Bail is set by the arresting officer when they assign a penal code to the charge. The local magistrate creates what’s called a bail schedule. A bail schedule is a list of penal codes and the associated bail amount for that charge. Once the arresting officer assigns the penal code, a bail amount is given to the defendant. Bail schedules can be different for every county and every state. Some defendants can have multiple charges, at this time, the charges have bail amounts, the bail amounts are added together and that is the total bail amount to free the defendant from jail. Say each charge is $20K, there are two of them, therefore the total bail is $40K and thus $4000 will be the fee and cost of the bail bond to free the defendant from jail.
2. What is the bail bonds process? Normally the customer just asks, How does this work? The bail bonds process is pretty simple. It works two ways. One; working with a bail bondsman. Here they would decide on a bail bonds company to work with. We suggest you choose carefully and read our How to Find a Legitimate Bail Bonds Agent article. Once they find a reputable company to work with, the bail agent will take them through the steps of filling out the bail bonds agreement. During this time the bail agents have a series of questions they must ask to ascertain the risk of writing the bond. So be ready to have all your personal information handy and phone numbers of all known associates of the defendant. Once the information is written down, its time to take care of the payment. Bail Bondsman take most forms of credit cards, checks or cash. From the bail agent will take you to the jail and post the bond with the deputy in charge there. You can wait at the jail for the defendant, or if the jail is very busy, you can go back to the bail bonds office and wait there. When the defendant reaches the bail bonds office, the paperwork needs to be signed and a picture taken. That’s it. The second choice is to post bail directly with the court. The difference in this scenario is that the total bail amount needs to be given to the court in cash form, to bail out the defendant. The full amount of money will be returned when the case is over.
3. Where are you? We would say that this question is the first one that gets asked all the time. Where are you and are you near the jail? Most customers want to come in to the office and get a sense of trust from doing business face to face. Most bail bonds companies have one major or corporate office. Then they have bail agents that are located in other cities or counties who either do their work from home or have smaller satellite offices. Some companies have legitimate offices located near the major jails like, Van Nuys Jail or Los Angeles Jail. There’s a big problem in the Google Places listings for these small businesses. Companies create 100′s of fake listings so that they are listed in all the little cities in hopes of getting discovered via Google Maps searches. Google also lists companies in their search results when it feels that its a “local” search so the company’s fake listings are showing up there also.
4. How Long Does it Take? A question with many vague answers. The normal answer is, three to four hours. But this generally depends on many things. One main signifier is how busy the jail is. If the jail is busy, it will take at least times longer, so the answer to How Long, if the jail is busy, at least 12 hours and maybe more. If the jail is relatively slow, the three to four hours stands. The reason for the length of time being so vague, is it depends on many things. Some jails the process is slower due to lack of staff to handle all the tasks needed to release someone from jail, but even if the jail is staffed correctly, there could be a delay in getting fingerprints back from the national database. Once a person is booked in to jail, they get fingerprinted and these fingerprints get sent to a national database to make sure there are no outstanding warrants from either the state they are in or another. This also proves to push the time a bit because if other jails are busy, then the national database is busy checking all the fingerprints. So one can see that there are many variables to the length of time for someone to be released from jail after being booked in. Once the defendant is cleared (fingerprints cleared) and the bail bond has been signed off, there is usually only an hour left until the defendant sees the free world.

So there they are, the top four questions our bail bonds agents hear every day on their calls from defendants or the people inquiring about them. All of the questions and answers are clear cut except for the last question regarding time of release. That’s usually the hardest to explain to the new customer. There is one main misconception that we get all the time and it involves the fee that is paid to the bail bondsman. Tune in for the next article when we talk about the non-refundable bail bonds premium.

How long

Internet Marketing for a bail bonds company is similar to marketing for a Small Business (SMB). Large companies don’t rely much on local marketing, but do rely on branding and national marketing. Bail Bonds companies are very local and usually pretty small. Below you’ll find how a SMB (bail bonds company included) should implement Internet marketing and what, if any, offline marketing should be done.

Locale is everything for a small business and the marketing is distributed into two main areas; online and offline.

1. Offline Marketing for Small Businesses (SMB) mostly involves print, radio, digital, and Television media.
   

   Bail Bonds Online Marketing

1. Offline Digital Media is where digital ads are created and displayed on digital networks throughout an area specified by the SMB. These networks include the large digital billboards seen near the freeways or in largely populated areas such as Sunset Blvd in Hollywood or the very famous, New York’s Time’s Square. The same company that distributes for these networks might also provide smaller, more niche areas, where the digital ads will show on televisions. These are seen in stores such as Coffee Bean and Starbucks. All of the digital ads should have unique phone numbers or codes on them so that they may be tracked and an ROI can be established on the efforts.
2. Print Media is the oldest way of marketing a SMB. Sources for this are any Yellow Pages or similar, Trade Magazines, local newspapers, and more. This particular form of advertising has decreased by more than half for almost all industries as more and more SMB’s are pulling their ad budgets out of this old form of advertising and placing it in to online marketing. Print media still has its place for some SMB. As in the bail bonds industry, bail bonds companies still need to have some sort of Yellow Pages listings. Most of the time when someone is in jail, the only access they have to the outside world is a phone call. The only source that the jails offer for information is the Yellow Pages and sometimes what’s called a “Call board” (which is basically the Yellow Pages ripped out and placed on the board or placards from local bail bonds companies and lawyers). There really is no other print media of use for a bail bonds company except for branding attempts.
3. Television Media isn’t a bad choice for branding the company, but the costs outway the results. Its simply a branding attempt and trying to find an ROI on commercials ran on local cable television just won’t be had. The normal person who gets called by someone in jail goes directly to one of two places; internet or (if they’re older) Yellow Pages.

Story Continued….bail bonds marketing

A bail bonds agent has the responsibility to the defendant that they’ve have bailed out. During the time the defendant is bailed out and attending to their court case, circumstances may come about where the bail agent will need to pick up the defendant. This article will speak upon the rules and regulations involved in apprehending the defendant and will provide the relevant laws and procedures for the safe arrest of persons (defendants) and the risk of Civil and Criminal liability for negligent acts by the bail bonds agent.

The California Penal Code has clear and concise guidelines for the arrest and detention of person being arrested with or without a warrant. Bail Bonds agents have the ability to arrest defendants under three different statutes; CPC 1300, 1301, and 837.

CPC 1300: A bail agent may surrender only if they have a certified copy of the bail bond or a certified copy of the certificate of deposit and the surrender must result in a signature by either the officer that the custody was initially committed or an officer in charge of the jail that the defendant is being surrendered to.

The bail agents in the field that are tracking down a person who has skipped on bail, should always have in their possession a certified copy of the bail paper work. At times, bail agents or authority representing the bail agents surrender the defendants without this paperwork, at this time, the defendants are free to go and the bail agent or authority representing the agent can be declared negligent and might receive penalties and possible get arrested themselves.

When an agent moves forward on an arrest of a defendant without a certified copy of the bail bond, they expose themselves to a large and unlimited litigation problems due to “false imprisonment.” The crimes that they could be guilty of are the following:

False Arrest: Intentional Tort. If a bail agent physically takes a person into custody without the correct paperwork, they are guilty of breaking this law.

False Imprisonment: This is intentional confinement of the person without consent and without “legal Privilege.”

What’s more, false imprisonment can also occur when the person being held is not physically restrained by the bail agent. If the person believes psychologically that they are imprisoned by fear or threat of force, false imprisonment charges can still be brought up against the bail bonds agent.

What the bail agents needs to know is that their power to arrest a person is only as strong as the paperwork and the statutes that govern them. Not having the correct paperwork renders the bail agent useless when seeking apprehension of the person who has skipped bail.

CPC 1301: This code section states by the authority extended to a person representing the original bail bonds agent.

The authority must have a certified copy of the bail bonds agreement where their name is written and endorsed by the original bail bonds agent. Basically, the authority needs to be listed on the bail bonds agreement and it must be signed by both the authority and the original bail bonds agent. The bail agent may use anyone they feel are capable of handling the pick up of a person that the bail agent is seeking.

With action though, the bail agent is legally responsible for any actions, good or bad, that the authorized person performs. If the authority neglects the law and is guilty of any actions, the legal responsibilities can and usually fall back on the signing bail bonds agent.

Risks that could occur in addition to False imprisonment and arrest are Battery; defined as intentional touching of the person of another in a harmful or offensive manner, without consent or legal reasons. In guilty cases, this usually happens when authorities under the bail agent arrest and detain the wrong person. Or if/when the authority uses excessive force when arresting the defendant.

Also, when arresting the wrong person, to be illegal, the person does not have to be physically touched, but according to law, can just have the feeling or threat resulting in psychological or mental injury.

An elevated step from battery for the authority can be the charge of assault defined as; a person is intentionally placed in reasonable apprehension of immediate battery without consent or legal reasons.

Other instances of negligent acts are; intentional infliction of mental (emotional) distress, defamation, contributory negligence, trespass to land, and invasion of privacy. In all instances a person affected can pursue a legal act such as suing or filing a complaint.

The bail agent must realize that the right to arrest is a privilege and is only a remedy to limit the liability of the bail bond that is in forfeiture. By bringing the defendant in via arrest, the liability that the bail agent has with this defendant can be relieved.

The bail agent’s preparation is to know as much about the laws governing arrest and detention. Having this knowledge allows the bail agent to conform to the laws, abide by the laws, and not get in trouble. The least the bail agents knows about the laws, the higher the chance is that the bail agent will break a law and get in trouble. Liability goes down with more and more legal education by the bail agent. (Part 2 Thur, 6-7-12)