In recent blog posts, both Brian Nairin and Jerry Watson have stressed the importance of educating law enforcement and judicial officials about the inefficiencies and poor performance of pretrial release agencies and deposit bail. To begin this effort, AIA has sent “Taxpayer Funded Pretrial Release: A Failed System” booklets, along with a letter from Jerry Watson, to criminal court judges in hot spots across the country including Florida and applicable Texas counties. Criminal court judicial officials in Ohio were sent a letter and the booklet “Government Sponsored Deposit Bail: A Failed System“. It is through these educational campaigns that our industry will begin to make progress.
Although each letter is tailored to address each state or county’s constitution, a few themes apply to all:
Recent studies find that the offender population consistently increases as opportunities in the legitimate job market diminish. In other words: jobs up, crime down and conversely, jobs down, crime up. Couple this with the fact that work force recovery will lag far behind any economic upturn and burgeoning court dockets over the next few years becomes a foregone conclusion.
The “unaffordability” presumption is mistaken. The truth is, today almost every person requiring bail can afford a commercial surety bond. The simple reason for this is that retail bail sellers have found it necessary to adjust their pricing model to meet the needs of their customer base. So, a person today who cannot arrange for financially secured release is either one who has burned every bridge with family and community or the pure transient. Either case will facially present such a flight risk that the court may not see bail as an acceptable alternative anyway. The single possible exception to this is the situation where bail has been set so high that almost no person can meet it.
Do failures to appear increase under this new, more relaxed and accommodating pricing by the bail seller? Interestingly, it does not. Our companies are among the nation’s most highly recognized multi-surety line underwriters, and our bail operation is eighty years old. We estimate that we write one of every five commercial bail bonds, and while our retail producers adjusted marketing approach has now been in vogue for a considerable time, the failure to appear rate of principals on bond has not increased.
If pretrial release and/or deposit bail is affecting your state or county, we would like to help educate those individuals who can influence change. To give us leads, suggestions, or to receive a copy of these letters and our pretrial release and deposit bail booklet(s), please contact us at [email protected]