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.