Q: Can a Person Bail Themselves Out of Jail?
Yes, technically a person can bail themselves out of jail. That all comes down to when we bail someone out of jail, we underwrite the bond, just like car insurance our house insurance, we would take down information about the person and find out if they qualify and in many times people do qualify to bail themselves out of jail. We just gotta make sure that they have enough around them in their surrounding environment that they’re not going to miss court and take off and run on us. Because the bottom line is if they make all their court appearance… nothing ever happens. If they were to miss court and we didn’t have a co-signer then we would have nobody to turn to; to assist us in getting them back into court. So you know again, yes, somebody can, but it comes down to the underwriting and us talking to the person see if they qualify.
Q: So overall it seems it would be best if they did deal with a professional in this, because there are probably many streams of red tape that someone, the lay person, might not be aware of.
Yeah, just like a lot of businesses people want to work on volume in our industry. And hey, we want to work on volume, because we went to work on giving and helping as many people as we can, the bottom line is this… this comes down to us to be productive at what we do and for us to be productive, we’ve got to make sure that people appear in court. If people don’t appear in court and run on us the that causes a problem. We’re going to start losing money and then the court is going to start losing faith in US. So we have to make sure that people appear in court, so that is very important when we underwrite a bond that doesn’t have to be that a hundred percent of them have to make it to court but it certainly does mean we want to have the statistic on our side that 100% get returned to court when they missed court.
So it is important that we underwrite a bond properly that we educate the client and their family and friends, and make sure that that person is going to appear in court.
Q: Which begs the final question here, what happens to the person if they do run and you do catch them and they don’t make their original court appearance.. Does the bail increase? Do they incur any additional charges? What happens?
If and when the person does miss court, it is not the end of the world. We can get them a new court date. We can get them a new court date and reinstate that bond back to the original amount. What that person has to have first and foremost, is faith in us. Because when we got them out of jail, we told them this. And if they miss court, all they have to do is call us up and tell us that I missed court I got scared, I got a flat tire, I’m sick, something happened… We can schedule a new court date and go tell the court what happened. The person appears with us and we can reinstate the bond back to the original amount. Now a great majority of people who missed court on us, that’s what they do because they have faith in us and they believe in us.
However, you know you’re going to run into those few people that will turn around and get scared because their attorney told them they’re going to prison or they’re going to do this and that, and you’re not prepared for it. When those people run, that’s when we have to, at times, turn to the other side of our industry and that is to go find them. We have that duty and obligation to do that. So at that point we will go out and start looking for them just like you would think of a bounty hunter doing… but you know we’re not bounty hunters, or bail bondsman doing our job and that is returning someone to court. So at that point we will go out we’ll start looking for them. Our hope is to easily find them, return them to court or jail if they have to go back and have them understand it that we are here to help you. And yes, if you miss court on us and we have to chase you, that doesn’t say that I’ll never bail you out again. I’ll mail you back out. Because now you’re going to have better faith in me in the fact that I have gotten you back out of jail if I do a second time that I’m going to get you back out I want to keep you out through the entire time you’re going to court.
So, the bottom line is that if a person misses court, is to call us, we will get you a new court date