Stuff You Should Know - How Bail Works

Episode Date: February 23, 2010

Bail is a centuries-old practice that allows defendants in criminal cases to be released from jail until their trial convenes. Learn more about the origins of bail and modern bail practices in this episode. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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It's ready, are you? Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. Hello. And this is Stuff You Should Know.

Yes. Right? Uh-huh, indeed. So, Chuck, how you doing? I'm good and well, yourself. Ah, that's enough banter. Okay. Chuck, you know that I've been arrested a couple of times.

I do know that, and I have not, as you know. And you're very fortunate. It's not a pleasant experience. I'm sure. You get booked. Yes. Right, they fingerprint you. Sure.

They make fun of how fat you look. They take all the things out of your pockets. Yeah. And keep them. Not forever. No, they give them back. Yeah. They carefully catalog everything

except any $100 bills you have on you. Do you have a mugshot? I do. And actually, when they took my mugshot, I was smiling and they thought it was funny. So they blew it out full size and hung it on the processing center wall. Really?

Yeah. Now, do you actually have that? They don't give you a copy of that, do they? I do. Really? Yeah, I ask for a copy. I have to go find it somewhere. Yeah, you should see if you're famous enough

to get on the... Smoking gun? Yeah, the smoking gun. Yeah, I'm not. You're not. No. People will be like, who? Yeah, there is a mugshot out there.

So if anything ever happens to us, then... It'll surface, I'm sure. Yeah. But I'm here to tell you that you can get out of jail if your bail is set, like $5,000, and all you have is $500. Not a bad deal. No, especially if you have a friend

who's willing to come lend you $500 to get out. Yeah, sure. But how would you do that, Chuck? What kind of sense does that make? If you're bail, the amount that's required to release you from jail until your court date is $5,000, how can you get out for $500? Well, I would think that that's some sort of

security type of deposit. Kind of, yeah. Or maybe a surety deposit? Yeah, maybe. Are we talking about bail? We're talking about bond, buddy. Okay. Yeah.

I just wanted to officially introduce the bail show. Yeah, we're doing a two-parter here, right? Yes, this was brought to our attention by listener Steve, who saw a little NPR thing on bail, and Josh happened to hear the same one, right? Yeah. That's very interesting, right? Yeah, it was a three-part series on NPR

from Laura Sullivan, who really got to the heart of the matter and kind of exposed a pretty serious racket that's going on here in the United States that unfairly burdens the poor. Well, we'll get to that, but we want to cover bail first, and then part two of the series will be bounty hunters. Right. So when we don't talk about that dog jerk in this podcast,

don't send us an email, wait two days, and you'll hear all about him. Yeah, okay. So like I said, Chuck, bail is basically money that you exchange to the court in return for your freedom after you're arrested, right? Yeah, how does all start? Well, frankly, it started a long time ago, Chuck.

It started in the 13th century, I believe the UK. Okay, so let's say we weren't around back then. No, we weren't, but it started in the UK in the 13th century where a surety, a surety is somebody who assures your bond, your bail, right, was actually a person rather than money. Well, it used to be a person, is that what you're saying? Yeah.

And they would actually hang in your place if you skip bail. Yeah, wow. So I mean, somebody really had to love you to stand in as your surety, your bail. I bet that didn't happen a lot back then. No, I wouldn't think so. That would be my guess.

Yeah, I mean, maybe if the person who was arrested was like a quadruple amputee. Sure. Then I'm sure you could find somebody who was a surety, but other than that, I don't know. I don't know that I would have put myself up. Right, and so then Habeas Corpus comes along in the 17th century, right?

Yeah. And that basically established terms for bail, and then the Bill of Rights in England there, shortly thereafter, talked about excessive bail and kind of set some more parameters on what you could do. Right, yeah, Habeas Corpus, remember, we did that podcast on that. Indeed.

Kind of huge, but yeah, that created the idea of bail for money, or money as bail. And then in the United States, we adopted a lot of the English common law that had to do with bail and jailing and all that, and we came up with the Judiciary Act of what, 1789? Yes, and what I found most interesting is that that sucker stayed in effect and fairly unchanged

until 1966, that's a long time. It is, but I mean, it's pretty basic stuff. It's if you are arrested and you're not a threat to the community, you should be able to post bail, because people like their money, and you want your money back, that's the whole point of the thing, if you're saying, here's $5,000, I'll be back for my court date because you are gonna

give me that $5,000 back. Right, right, right. So yeah, it did remain unchanged until 1966, although it was put into the Eighth Amendment that people would be granted bail, and that bail would not be excessive, and that's the same one that contains the cute little provision about no cruel or unusual punishment.

Right, so, 66, it changed some, and then in 1984, it changed again, and what we ended up with was, some loopholes were closed that allowed dangerous people to go free, more limits were imposed on judges, and they basically made it to where nonviolent criminals were the ones most apt to get bail, and if you were a violent criminal, your bail was probably pretty large, or denied.

Right, and originally, if you were accused of a capital crime where you could get the death penalty, you couldn't have bail, and I'm pretty sure that still remains in effect, but yeah, and there's a lot of places, especially huge metropolitan areas like, say, Los Angeles, that have bail schedules. There's just so many people coming in

and out of the doors that they're like, oh, perjury, well, then that's a $5,000 bail. They just literally look it up on their chart, follow their little finger across, until they get too kidnapped with intent to rape, and what was that one actually? One million dollars. Sure, and it should be pretty high.

I would think so. Right, so Chuck, let's say someone is caught kidnapping, and they have some sort of malicious intent associated with it, and their bail set at a million dollars. They have a million dollars, say they have an AMEX black card. Right, good for them. They can slap that puppy down,

and pay what's called a cash bail. Yes, many places, I bet that they would rack up on sky miles, a bad criminal who gets caught a lot. Sure, with a black AMEX card. But they do some places do accept checks and credit cards, or just good old fashioned green backs. Right, but let's say that you have a million dollars, or your bail is a million dollars,

but you can only come up with 100 grand in cash, right? Yes. Who are you gonna call? Not Ghostbusters, a bail bond with Josh, or a bailer, it's another name. Yeah, you remember in Athens, there were like t-shirts, bail bond t-shirts, and they'd give you like a 10% discount

if you were wearing it. What was the name of that one? I can't remember. I mean that they were literally, it was an institution in Athens, I can't remember those. I don't either, they had match books in all the bars. Yeah, they were very famous actually.

Did you ever have one of those? Did they help you out, or was that in Athens? It wasn't in Athens, but I was arrested. No more questions. Okay. I'll let you off on this one. So Chuck, when you call a bail bondsman, what they're gonna put up as a surety bond,

remember we talked about a surety as somebody who says I will cover this person's bail. Yeah, and that's basically the bail bondsman, and they are backed by an insurance company, a very special insurance company. Obviously they don't have just a regular state farm policy. And they are now on the hook for you appearing in court, and they have to pay that huge sum of money

if you don't show. Right, so they'll take a 10% premium. Sure, well yeah, that's why they do it. And that's on top of everything else, right? Yeah. And then they'll put up the money, or they'll say, actually they don't put up the money. They say, I will put up the money out.

Like you said, I'm on the hook now. Right. But they'll also take some collateral, maybe like a title to your parents' house, or the title to your car, some jewelry, or whatever. They will also, Josh, get friends and family involved to help chip in. And so that way if they're kind of on the line,

they think the person will show up for court. Right, yeah. You're kind of indebted to your parents for bailing you out and putting their house up. You don't want your poor parents to lose their house, right? Exactly. You can also do, we'll get to more on that, right? Yeah, yeah.

You can also do released on citation where the cop just basically, it's like a traffic ticket is a released on citation bail. That's my favorite kind of bail. Is it? Sure. My favorite is the kind where they're like, you know what, I'm not even gonna give you this ticket.

Just go ahead. Just be careful, son. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, that's my favorite. There's released on Recognizance. Sure, that's when you actually are booked and arrested, but the crime is probably not so severe and definitely not violent.

And they'll say, we trust that you'll show up. You're not a flight risk. Right. Don't worry about paying anything. And then we talked about how your parents can give their house title as collateral to a bounty hunter. You can actually do that in some states. To a bail bondsman.

Sorry, yes. You can do that in some states with the jail directly. Oh, really? Through a property bond. On the spot. Yeah, the court places a lien in the amount of the bail against your, say, your house or your land or whatever. And if you skip, then they can foreclose on it

and actually sell it to get their money back. Wow, yeah. So will they use, if you have, like you said, the $500, if your bail was $50,000, would you give that $500 to the bail bondsman? Is that how that works? Yeah, what they do is, let's say you're, usually they charge 10% premium.

Right. So that's just their fee, right? That's just their fee. Because it's a 10%, it's 10% usually of the bail. People assume that what you're doing is you've just carved out 10%. And then, you know, you don't owe them anymore. Not true.

No, this is 10% on top of the bail. So if it's $50,000, the 10% will be $5,000. And that's just the money they took for saying, I'll cover you. Yeah, it's basically loan interest. Exactly. Very quick and urgent loan interest. Right, yeah.

And it is, it's a loan. They're loaning you your freedom, basically. Chuck, dealing with bail bondsman is the most common way to get out of jail. Yeah. You know, people can't come up with five grand bail, but they can usually come up with $500 premium. Sure, that's the whole deal.

And we'll get into that later about the poor, but not very many people can afford their bail. Right. Even if they're rich fat cats, they will often set the bail. I just saw the record was last October. Did you see that? Uh-uh.

The guy's name, he was the head of the Galleon Group. And they were apparently did some insider trading, Raj Rajaratnam. And he set the record in October, $100 million bail. Wow. Bernie Madoff's is only 10 million, if that tells you. Wow. So he had 20 mil to put down as his, I guess, deposit.

Yeah. And the judge said, all right, you can hang out. And the bail bondsman was like, yes, score. Because that's pure profit to him. Pure profit. And when you're dealing with the bail bondsman, there's some things you want to look for. I mean, they're business people.

They deal with some of the seedier quarters of society, right? Yeah, but it's a real business. And the documents are very real as well. And you want to very, at the very least, you want to be aware of what you're signing in most cases. And you definitely want to read it as well. Yeah, you can't really negotiate it. No.

You're kind of stuck between a rock and a hard place. But you have to be aware of what you're signing when you sign the bail bond contract. Because it is an extremely powerful and pretty much airtight contract. We'll get to exactly all it entails in the Bounty Hunter episode. But this isn't like, hey, I'll come back for court.

That's not all that that thing says. No, you're signing away certain rights. And that is the teaser for Thursday show. Yeah. So Chuck, you also want to make sure that a bail bondsman that you're dealing with will be responsive to questions from your family, is easily contacted, has a cell phone, that kind of thing.

And if you get the impression that your bail bondsman is not going to be there for you, then you want to move along and find another one that you feel more comfortable with. And every town is lousy with bail bondsman. Because every town is lousy. Well, not every town, but many towns are lousy with crime. Sure. And that one leads to the other.

So Josh, the other thing you should do if you go to hire bail bondsman is, like if you were hiring any personal contractor, look at their ID. Make sure they're registered or licensed if they have to be. I think you have to be licensed in every state now, right? If it's legal? Yeah, there are states where it's not legal.

We'll get to that in a second. OK. So check out their creds. Ask for detailed explanations of any kind of fees, in addition to the 10%. You don't want to get a bill at the end that says, well, you had to pay for this, this, and this as well. So just make sure it's on the level.

And like you said, make sure that they communicate with you regularly. Right. And if you aren't comfortable with who you're talking to, again, just move along unless you're in a state, one of four states in the union, that just do not allow a commercial bail bond market whatsoever.

And where is that? Wisconsin, Oregon, Illinois, and Kentucky all have laws on the books that outlaw commercial bail bonding. Wisconsin does it in a roundabout way, which says that no surety, remember the person that gets you out, can be compensated for being a surety. And well, that's how they make their money in the bail bond

market. So there's that. And then say like Kentucky expressly outlaws a bail bond industry. Wow. Yeah. So in those states, you have to put up your own money or a property bond or something like that.

Or I imagine they probably have higher rates of being released on your own recognizance. Yeah, maybe not. Or maybe you're just SOL in Kentucky. Well, if you're poor Chuck, you're SOL in the United States. Very true. We were talking about the NPR report by Laura Sullivan. Yeah.

I got to say, I think everybody should go read this. It really exposed a racket in the US between the criminal court system and bail bondsmen. Yeah, they used Broward County, Florida as a really great example because they had a situation down there where they were kind of a situation that's all over the country. Jails are full.

Tax dollars are like people are paying tons of money to keep these people. $9 billion a year in the US. $115 a day is what it costs to jail someone, at least in Broward County, per inmate. That's like not the worst hotel in the world. No, and there are alternatives, specifically pretrial programs. Yes, and that is when they release people with sometimes

this GPS or ankle monitoring systems. Sometimes you just have to call in or text when they're home and stay within a certain radius of their home. And it was a huge, huge success. Right, and then it dried up. All funding for it dried up except for just the tiniest amount. Right.

Why? Because of bribes. Well, not bribes. We should COA here. Because bail bondsmen rallied together and hired a lobbyist, and they wrote a bunch of checks to the Broward County commissioners. Yeah, the commissioners and the mayor as well, right?

And actually Chuck, the mayor of the commissioners, the head of the board of commissioners, four days before this vote on pretrial funding got 15 checks totaling $5,000 from local bail bondsmen for his campaign. Gotcha. Yeah. And pretrial, it was, it cost about $2 a day

where you said that keeping someone in jail cost $115 a day? Yeah, they were able to shut down a $20 million wing of their jail. It was that popular and successful of the program. But the problem is, because it was popular and successful, there were people who normally would have gone to a bail bondsman to get out of jail who were just getting out through the pretrial program.

So like you said, they got a lobbyist who was actually also a lobbyist for the board of commissioners and got the whole thing shut down, basically. Unbelievable. Like a few people who are still in the program. But it's not nearly what it used to be, even though it was a success. So there's one way that bail bondsmen

are manipulating the system. In another part of that NPR report, people in Lubbock, Texas, were profiled. And these people, their bail, their bond, would have been like $75. Because they had like $750 bail. But these are very, very poor people that can't come up with $75.

They don't have anybody to borrow it from. So they're rotting in jail for months. One guy stole $40 worth of blankets because it was cold in the station wagon one night. And he's been in jail for four months. So thousands and thousands of dollars. Thousands of dollars. And the reason is, is these bail bondsmen

are saying this is a cutthroat industry and we can't afford to let anybody who would potentially be a customer slip through. So that means that people who can't afford to be a customer don't have the option of pretrial because it was shut down. So they get to stay in jail at the taxpayer expense to benefit only the bail bond industry. And I'm all for capitalism and someone earning a buck.

I'm not anti-bail bondsman. Not at the expense of someone's freedom. Well, and the fact that if you're talking about the bail bondsmen, maybe a few of them shutting down or costing the taxpayers billions of dollars, it's a no-brainer. No, it isn't. But again, powerful lobby.

As Laura Anderson points out, most indigent inmates don't have a lobby. Well, yeah, and I think she said 50% of people in jail are the only reason they're in jails because they can't afford bail. And that's at least in Broward County. So billions of dollars in taxpayer money, months and months of freedom for inmates,

or incarceration for inmates. And the bail bond industry is thriving, right? There is another way that they are thriving, actually, Chuck. They don't pay up when people run. What? Yeah. What do you mean? So as part of a punishment in most states,

if you're a bail bondsman and somebody skips, you're supposed to automatically pay that, say, $5,000. Sure. They don't. Well, I thought that's what it was all paid for. No. So they keep the premium, a 10% premium, and then sometimes they, well, in most cases,

they negotiate with the county. Yeah. About 5% of the actual bail is what they end up paying. So that means that they got a 10% premium. They made 5% of that for doing nothing. Right. That's it. Well, I imagine.

They don't have to pay out any money. They're insured anyway, though. So even when they do have to pay out, they're not really paying out, right? Right. I'm sure their insurance premiums are sky-high, but I'm sure we're going to hear from a bail bondsman. I would like to, actually.

Well, Chuck, let's go on to the next episode, two days from now. Well, I have a quick question. OK. Because my favorite all-time movie, comedy, is Midnight Run. Really? Oh, yeah. Robert DeNiro and Charles Graden.

Sure. And is probably the best bounty hunter movie ever made. In that movie, the bounty hunter, Joey Pants hired, or I'm sorry, the bail bondsman, hired two bounty hunters to cover the same case. And that's where a lot of the comedy comes from. Right. The great John Ashton, opposite DeNiro.

Is that true? Can that happen? It depends, yeah. Really? Sure. You can have freelance bounty hunters running your cases. Well, I thought it said in the article that they try to keep ethical boundaries set,

because it's no good. All right, but you can. OK. Depending. Caused a lot of problems in the movie. Have you ever seen Deadman? Oh, yeah. Caused a lot of problems in that movie, too.

Yeah, good point. Specifically, one Smushed Head. Yes, I love that movie. I do, too. It took me probably five or six times of seeing it before I realized it's actually a dark comedy. There's some funny parts, for sure. No, watch it like that.

Like, the whole thing is a dark comedy from beginning to end. It's not. Great soundtrack, too, by the way. Yeah. I have the great Neil Young. I'm not a big Neil Young fan, but I even like that sound. Well, because he didn't sing. So here we go, yeah.

OK, well, Chuck, that's it for bail right now, all right? Yeah. It'll come up here or there when we talk about bounty hunters in two days. But in the meantime, what? Is it time for listener mail? It is, Josh. Josh, I'm going to call this Blood Transfusion

from Jehovah's Witness. Oh, yeah. Actually, it's not from a Jehovah's Witness, but it's a good story. This is from Mito, and Mito is Portuguese. Yes. This is from Portugal. Cool.

Hello, guys. I heard your podcast about organ donation, and you mentioned Jehovah's Witnesses not being big on blood transfusion. I have a little scoop on that. My father is a doctor in Brazil. And many years ago, he came home all shaken up. When he told us his story, he revealed

that he came upon an accident where a small kid came into his operating room, managed to stabilize the kid, and all he needed was a blood transfusion, and he would go home in a few days. And I know where this is headed. The kid's family was Jehovah's Witness. They argued with the father for hours, and basically said very clearly, we

would rather him die than get a blood transfusion. So like any good doctor, I don't know if that's true or not, but like this doctor did, he basically went against their wishes and gave the kid a transfusion without the parents knowing it. Wow. Exactly. The parents got really mad and were ready to take

his medical license, but the kid awoke by that time smiling. Seeing this, the parents started crying. Thank to my father for saving his life. More than 10 years later, they still receive Christmas gifts. My dad does for them every year. Wow. So they're like, oh wait, this is kind of nice, actually.

My son lives. Well, you remember the Jehovah's Witnesses believe that the blood becomes impure once it leaves the body. Sure. Yeah. It seemed to. How about this guy? Yeah.

It seemed too impure to me. So he attached a picture of his father and says there's one of many stories that turned my father into a hero while I was a boy. He saves life for a living. Lives for a living doesn't that make him a hero? Oh, definitely. And I say, absolutely.

And he emailed back and he said his dad also gave a big pin tracheotomy one time. Awesome. So this dude is on the scene. I told you about a friend of mine who's a mom got an emergency tracheotomy with a steak knife and a straw. Oh, really?

Yeah. Yeah. So kudos to you, Mito, and to your father. And he also sent a picture of his little nephew, Lucas, who just welcomed into the world. I saw it. And whom his father delivered. Nice.

So he does a little bit of everything. Yeah, he sounds like a pretty good guy. And a hero, indeed. Well, if you have a great hero story, Chuck and I want to hear it, right? Yes. Just don't make it up. Please don't.

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You're ready to travel in 2023. And since 1981, Gate One Travel has been providing more of the world for less. Let Gate One handle the planning for you with affordable escorted tours and European River Cruises. And right now, through January 30, use promo code HEART20 to receive 20% off your tour. That's promo code HEART20 through January 30.

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