The Benefits of Bail Bonds in Los Angeles, Part I

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.