When you’re first exploring the world of bail bonds in Ventura, you’re probably not exactly in the best place mentally and emotionally. Looking into bail bonds means that someone you love is in jail waiting for a court date, and that means a lot of stress on you to get them out. Furthermore, it means the bail amount is more than you can afford to put up, or else you’d just pay in cash instead of getting a bail bond.

Here are a few terms that you should know by heart before you start talking in detail to a Los Angeles bail bondsman about getting your loved one out of jail:

Bail: You might think you know what bail means — it’s the amount of money someone has to put up to get out of jail. What some people don’t realize is that paying your bail doesn’t get you off the hook — you still have to show up for your court date, and if you’re convicted, you still have to serve out your term in jail.

Bail amounts are put up by a family as a form of insurance — it says to the court “the defendant will be at his court date(s), or we will give you this money”. If the defendant does in fact show up conscientiously, you get the money back.

Bail Bonds: A bail bond is an agreement between your family and a bail bondsman. If a loved one has been granted bail but you can’t afford to pay the whole amount, you can give 10% of the full amount to a bail bondsman and he will turn around and put up the entire amount of bail to the courts. You don’t ever get that 10% back, but you do get out of paying the other 90%.

Bail Bondsman: Bail bondsmen are licensed by the State to deal with families who can’t pay the full bail amount. They have a variety of special rights relating to making sure that the defendant makes it to their court dates, up to and including hiring bounty hunters to seek them out and bring them back by any means necessary.

Indemnitor: That’s you! The Indemnitor is the person who pays the 10% down on the bail bond. If the defendant jumps bail, the Indemnitor becomes immediately responsible for paying the other 90% of the bail amount — so you have good reason to make sure that they go to court as well!

Bounty hunters — from Dog to Boba Fett, the title of bounty hunter seems to evoke a sense of power, invulnerability, and immunity to consequence. The reality of the job is very different from the romanticized version you see on TV and in the movies. In real life Los Angeles, a bounty hunter is simply a person who is hired by a Los Angeles bail bondsman to bring in a defendant that has jumped bail.

A bail bondsman, in turn, is someone who has contracted with the court to put up the full amount of someone’s bail in exchange for 10% of the total bail amount. If the defendant goes to all of his court dates, the bail bondsman gets his money back, and gets to keep the 10% (which he receives from the defendant’s family in exchange for putting up the whole bail amount).

If the defendant doesn’t show up for court, the bondsman is out 90% of the bail amount — unless he can hire a bounty hunter to get the defendant back within a relatively short timeframe. In order to make sure that the bounty hunter can accomplish this goal, the government allows bounty hunters a variety of rights that normal citizens don’t have, including the right to shoot people and break into people’s houses in pursuit of a bail jumper.

In the vast majority of cases, a bail jumper is simply hiding out somewhere, scared and passive. The bounty hunter’s real-life job, then, is 90% private detective and only 10% gun-toting badass. Most of their effort goes to finding people that are hiding; very little time is spent kicking down doors and waving large-caliber weapons in people’s faces. The best bounty hunters claim a 90% retrieval rate, and less than 1% of those cases involve any form of violence.

The bounty hunter collects a fee from the bail bondsman for every successfully returned defendant. That cuts into the bondsman’s profit, and it gives the bondsman strong incentive to make sure the defendant doesn’t jump bail in the first place.

They do this mostly by being careful about the people to whom they give out their bail bonds. Van Nuys bail bondsmen don’t hesitate to deny a bail bond to repeat offenders, families with poor credit history, or even families that have relatives across the border.

In ‘The Benefits of Bail Bonds in Los Angeles Part I, we talked about what a bail bond was and why you don’t want to leave a loved one in jail for health reasons. Below, we’ll talk a bit more about other very good reasons to keep your loved one out of the slammer.

Someone In Jail Can’t Work
There are a lot of things that you can’t do from jail, and one very important one is work. Someone in jail can’t hold down a job. In addition to getting fired for unavailability, that also means they have no income. That, in turn, can make it very difficult to keep up on rent or mortgage payments, car payments, and any other monthly financial obligations the defendant may have. It sucks to sit in jail, and to be acquitted in court only to find that you have no home and no vehicle — well, the acquittal isn’t much consolation.

Courtroom Attire
In court, every element of the image you project affects the jury. If you’re out on bail, you can walk in of your own volition in a suit of your choice. If you come in from jail, you’ll probably be in an orange jumpsuit and handcuffs, and you’ll be guided by the bailiff. That alone can have a profound effect on your chances in court.

Wobblers
A ‘wobbler’ is a crime that can be interpreted in different ways, one of which is a misdemeanor and one of which is a felony. Wobblers are surprisingly commonplace, and the defendant’s freedom plays a big role in how the prosecutor decides to play the case. A defendant that is out on bail has a much better chance of getting their wobbler prosecuted as a misdemeanor; a defendant that comes in from jail is much more likely to face felony charges.

Planning Time
If your loved one is trying to plan out a courtroom strategy, it’s amazingly important that he be free — out of jail — to do so. From jail, their time to meet with their attorney is limited, as is their access to information. It’s much better to be free to roam Los Angeles; bail bonds help them to accomplish exactly that. With more freedom to talk to people (especially his attorney), his chances of winning his case improve dramatically.

There is only one reason you might be looking into bail bonds in Los Angeles: someone you know and love has been arrested, charged with a crime, arraigned, and assigned bail. They are now sitting in jail waiting for their trial date, and you, as someone who loves them, have decided to pay the bail in order to secure their release.

The problem is, you cannot afford the bail amount. If you could, you would already have gone down to the courtroom and put up the money, knowing that you’d get it back at the end of the trial. Since you can’t, you know you need a bail bond.

What Is a Bail Bond?

A bail bond is a contract between you, the defendant, the courts, and a Los Angeles bail bondsman. In this contract, you agree to pay 10% of the bail amount to the bail bondsman on the understanding that he will put up the other 90% of the bail cost and thus secure the release of your loved one.

If the defendant jumps bail (i.e. doesn’t show up for his court date), the bail bondsman will do two things: hire a bounty hunter to bring the defendant in by any means necessary, and enact legal action against you to collect the other 90% of the bail amount. By not going to court, the defendant is endangering his own health and your financial livelihood.

That said, there are a lot of good reasons to seek out a bail bond.

Jails Are Not Healthy
The first reason has to do with the simple physical well-being of your loved one. To put it bluntly, jails are filthy disgusting places teeming with people who won’t hesitate to hurt your loved one if they think they can benefit from it. Even if that ‘benefit’ is only to look tough in front of the other prisoners — or just for plain old fun. There’s nothing good about spending time in jail; a bail bond helps insure your loved one doesn’t have to.

That’s just the beginning; there are several other good reasons to get a bail bond that we’ll discuss in Part II — next week.

Trials are legally required to happen efficiently; it’s a part of the US Constitution — specifically the 6th Amendment. Unfortunately, the right to a “speedy” trial is a relative thing; with the sheer number of court cases in America today “speedy” can mean months of waiting before the trial starts. Especially in a big town like Los Angeles, bail bonds are a vital part of the system.

That’s because bail bonds are the path that a defendant can take in order to await his trial at home instead of in jail. If you can’t afford your bail, your options are to wait in jail or get a bail bond. Waiting in jail means you’re not working, which means you’re not paying your mortgage, not paying on your car, and not keeping up with your friends and family. You can imagine the results: they’re devastating.

Getting a bail bond, then, is obviously the better option. A bail bond essentially means that someone you know gets in touch with a bail bondsman and gives them 10% of the cost of your bail. The bondsman then puts up the entire amount of your bail, and you go home free and clear — at least until your trial starts — within a few hours.

You must then show up for your trial religiously. If you don’t, the bondsman can and will send bounty hunters after you to drag your butt back to the courtroom, even if it’s just because you slept in. A Los Angeles bail bondsman has that right because he is the one that just fronted you 90% of your bail — an amount that often registers in the five to six digit range.

Bail bonds thus form a critical contract between the defendant, the courts, the bail bondsman, and the loved one who signs the bail bond agreement. In the worst case scenario, if the bounty hunter cannot find you, the bail bondsman is given leave to come down on the loved one in order to get the other 90% of the bail paid back. This gives the defendant several powerful motives to go to his court dates — and that, in the end, is what everyone else wants.

When you need a Los Angeles bail bondsman, you’re already in a bad situation. Someone you love has just been arrested and they’re in jail. You’re stressed out, and suddenly you find yourself dealing with a very foreign experience: the legalistic and complex-seeming world of bail bonds. Finding a high-quality bail bondsman should be your first priority.

Fortunately, the one factor you don’t need to worry about is money: in the State of California, all bail bond fees are legally fixed at 10% of the bail amount. That means that every bail bondsman you meet will charge you the exact same amount. That means that you’re free to focus on service rather than cost. Here are the most important elements of service that a Los Angeles bail bondsman can offer:

Speed
When your loved one is sitting in jail, the most important thing you can do is get him out of there fast. A talented bail bondsman should be able to get your man (forgive the political incorrectness, but most prisoners are male) out of jail within a few hours, even in the middle of the night. The last thing you want is for them to sit in jail overnight — jails are filthy, horrible places.

Accessibility
A bail bondsman should be available 24/7/365, end of story. Particularly good bail bondsman have an “instant call back” policy, where you can use their website to send them an instant message and they will call whatever number you give them within a few moments.

Helpfulness
Some bail bondsmen are, to put it mildly, laconic. A good one is empathic, and will help you figure out the intricacies of the bond process without getting impatient or sarcastic. Ask a potential bail bondsman to talk you through the process before you give them any money, and if they don’t help you with a smile and a boatload of patience, consider asking someone else.

Payment Plans
This is a tough one, because bail bondsmen aren’t legally allowed to collect interest if they give you a payment plan — it might drive the total cost above the 10% legal limit. That means they’re not terribly inclined to allow payment plans; if you find one that does, you’ve probably found a good one.

People who haven’t dealt much with the justice system might think that there’s only one kind of bail bond; Pasadena‘s more ‘experienced’ citizens know better.

Bail bonds exist to ensure that honorable, functional members of society that have been arrested on suspicion of committing a crime don’t have their lives ruined by the experience. If you don’t get a bail bond, you might have to wait months in jail for your court date to arrive. While you’re waiting, you can lose your job, your car, your home, and anything else you were making regular payments on.

There are six types of bail bonds available to defendants. Each must be obtained by a loved one, as defendants are disallowed from talking to Los Angeles bail bondsmen directly.

Standard – Basically a loan with no interest, a standard bail bond requires 10% of the value of the bond to initiate. The bondsman then pays the full value of the bond to the court. If the defendant shows up conscientiously, that is that. If the defendant tries to jump bail, the bondsman has the right to hire bounty hunters to find him and bring him to court.

Federal – Just like a standard bail bond, but for defendants who are being tried by the Federal government instead of a State.

Immigration – If the defendant is a foreign national, an immigration bond is in order. Foreign defendants are much more likely to jump bail, so immigration bonds are much more difficult to acquire.

Cash Only – Sometimes a judge will disallow a standard bail bond in lieu of requiring 100% of the cash up front. Bail bondsmen rarely get involved in this instance; you simply bring the entire amount of the bail to the court.

Surety – Surety bonds are like standard bonds but also require the defendant to perform some other action in order to be allowed free. Most often, this involves going driving school or rehab.

Property – If a bail amount is particularly high, a property bond is often requested by the bondsman. A property bond is basically like a standard bond but requires the defendant’s family to put up a piece of real estate or other valuable property as collateral on the bond.

If you think you might not qualify for bail bonds, San Diego has good news for you — if you’ve been given a bail amount and you aren’t a repeat offender, you almost certainly qualify for a bail bond.

Interestingly, it’s not the government that ultimately makes the decision — your ability to qualify for a bail bond is almost entirely left up to the bail bondsman. Because it’s the bail bondsman who ‘gambles’ his money on the defendant contentiously showing up for every trial date, it’s the bail bondsman who decides if any given defendant is a worthwhile risk.

The cost of Bail Bonds in California
No matter where you go in Cali — from San Francisco to Los Angeles, bail bonds always cost the same amount: 10% of the total bail cost. So if you’ve been handed a bail amount of $25,000, the cost of the bail bond will be $2,500. No matter what the circumstances, if a bail bondsman asks you to pay even a dollar more than %10 of the bail cost, he’s doing something illegal.

Payment Types
You can pay the 10% in a variety of ways, however. You can use cash, credit, money transfer — and depending on your financial stability, you might even be able to get a payment plan. This isn’t always in the best interest of the bail bondsman, because he puts up 100% of the bail cost immediately even if you don’t pay your 10% right away — so it’s risky for him to grant you this favor.

Financial Stability
If you prove to be a stable person, however — meaning you have a regular job, you own your own house, you have a decent credit rating, and all that — you’re likely to be able to talk the bail bondsman into giving you a payment plan. Again, you must also [i]not[/i] be a repeat offender; people who have been in jail before tend not to stick around for trial a second time, especially if they’re guilty.

There isn’t a whole lot that’s confusing about bail bonds. In Los Angeles, your responsibilities as an indemnitor — that’s the person who puts up the collateral for and signs on a bail bond — are very clear.

Of course, when you’re dealing with the stress of hearing that someone you love has been arrested, the added responsibility of dealing with the bail bondsman can make that ‘very clear’ set of responsibilities read like Greek. Here are three things you must understand when you deal with the intricacies of Los Angeles bail.

Bail Bonds are Non-Negotiable
When bail is given, the judge sets the bail cost and it cannot be changed except under very extraordinary circumstances. The cost of California bail bonds is legally fixed at 10% of the total bail — or 20% if the bail is a very low amount. A bail bondsman who charges you any more or any less than 10% is breaking the law, and you shouldn’t work with him.

Bail Bond Payment Plans are Zero Interest
The fact that a bail bond fee is non-negotiable leads to an interesting phenomenon. While some bail bondsman are nice enough to set up payment plans for those people who can’t even make the 10% bail bond cost, they’re not allowed to charge interest on those payment plans. If they do, they drive the total cost of the bail bond above 10%, which is illegal.

Bail Bonds are Not The End of Anything
Even after your loved one has been released because you’ve successfully acquired a bail bond, your responsibility isn’t over — not by a long shot. Not only does the defendant still have to deal with his court case, but YOU are on the hook to make sure he shows up for all of his court dates. If he doesn’t, the bail bondsman can and will come to you to pay back the other 90% of the bail — so make sure the defendant makes every court date.

Bail bonds aren’t complicated things — the hard part is keeping the facts straight while your mind is swimming with stress. Keep your head clear and it will all be over in a matter of hours.

It’s a pretty common threat from a spouse or a parent — “If you end up in jail, I’m leaving your butt there to rot.” Obviously, it’s intended to keep the guy (and yes, it’s almost always a guy) in question from committing a crime. But if it doesn’t work and your guy gets himself arrested, should you follow through on the threat?

The answer, quite simply, is no. Ask any Los Angeles bail bondsman and he’ll tell you unequivocally — even if it’s just for a single night, you never want to leave a loved one in jail intentionally. Not only are you risking them getting roughed up by some thugs in the holding tank, but even once they’re ‘safe’ in their own cell, jails are filthy.

If you’re worried that the bail bondsman is just after your business, skip him and call a police officer. They’ll tell you the exact same thing: get your loved one out of jail ASAP, for his mental and his physical health. It’s not difficult to get bail bonds in Los Angeles — so get it done quickly.

They’ve Already Learned the Lesson
Unless your guy is already accustomed to getting arrested, believe me when I tell you that getting arrested in an of itself is lesson enough. By the time you’re wondering whether or not to call the bail bondsman, they’ve already been:

• Handcuffed
• Fingerprinted
• Interrogated
• Entered into a national database
• Sent on the Walk of Shame to the holding pen
• Left to wait around in the holding pen with a bunch of unsavory characters
• Send on another Walk of Shame to their cell
• Told they’re going to sit through a trial.

The last thing they need at this point is you to decide to inflict even more insult on top of all of this injury. Just get them home and safe as quickly and efficiently as you can, end of story.

All it takes is a quick call to the bail bondsman to get bail posted. Your guy will be out in a matter of hours, and you can move on with the business of dealing with the arrest properly.