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this post was submitted on 24 Aug 2023
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As someone not from America, and having never gone to jail, what is this?
Someone has already explained the mechanics of bail to you but from a cultural perspective it's important to note that someone going to one of these storefront bail bondsmen is interpreted as a sign that you are
in an awful lot of trouble
probably a person to avoid because your problems will have a tendency to become my problems
broke enough that you're willing to pay punitive interest in order to stay out of jail
Normally I'd be all on my soapbox about how the bail system essentially means that poor people get punished more for the same crimes and shit like that but this guy really is an absolute monster. Back in the 90s everyone loved him for "cleaning up New York City" using the twin powers of aggressively racist policing and violence against homeless people. After 9/11 they all but made him a saint, started calling him "America's Mayor" and shit like that, but those of us who had been paying attention knew that he was a shit leader and a shit person who was benefiting from the fact that we needed someone to rally behind after the tragedy that was the 9/11 attacks. Watching him be exposed for the grifter and criminal that he always was has been cathartic for a lot of people.
To expand on why this isn't a good look - bail bondsmen typically charge a non-refundable 10% of bail. So if you're a former mayor who shit on your own legacy by trying to overthrow the government and your bail is set at $150,000 that means you're paying a bail bondsman $15,000 that you won't get back ever. That $15,000 is a fee that they apply in case they need to hire a bounty hunter to drag your delinquent ass to court.
A person usually tries pretty hard to raise bail without paying a bondsman because they don't want to lose that 10%. So this is basically the equivalent of Giuliani going to a Payday Loans lender to get an advance on his paycheck at a predatory rate.
Yeah just thought the pay day loans comparison from another comment.
So so you get your bond back normally if you don't break the terms of the bond? And this way they lose that deposit but they may only have 15k not 150k.
Yeah normally you get the full amount of bail back from the court. The 10% fee is what a bondsman charges as interest / risk of your fleeing.
Yeah, The problem isn't the bondsman. A 10% fee to front $100k that could go poof if the perp decides to flee is reasonable, imo. The problem is cash bail in the first place. The only time it should be used is if there's a reasonable risk of the person fleeing. Instead we use it for each and every criminal regardless, just to fuck them over.
I'm not going to flee the country cause I got busted with a little weed but they'll still stick you with a $5000 bond. Not to mention people that are wrongly arrested and charged. They have to come up with a ton of money, pay a bondsman, or sit in jail. All because some asshole cop decided to wrongly arrest you.
Ah thanks. So this is like a pay day loan lender but for bail bonds?
Yeah, more or less. You only go to them when your other option is to sit in jail while you lose your job, car and house awaiting the opportunity to prove your innocence.
Add to that, part of what complicated 9/11 response was the main communication hub had been located in the twin towers, after they had already been attacked by a car bomb in the 90s.
Dude who made the decision to do that? Rudy.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-newyork-security-giuliani-idUSB21557420080126
Basically, if you are deemed not a risk to the community/flight risk(all arguable in this case but they did set them bail amounts), the courts give you a sum based on your accused offense you can pay to get out of jail till the trial date. If you show up to trial you get the bail amounts back, if you don't you get a warrant and the courts keep your money. Where bail "bonds" come into play, is they are companies acting as pseudo banks who will lend you money to make bail with interest obviously. It's very predatory because the only people who generally have to use these are poor people and the states don't care about poor criminals enough to make it not so predatory.
I haven’t seen bonds work like that (but I don’t doubt some do). The way they work around me is:
edit: my brain stopped working on point 4 as pointed out by @Nightwingdragon@lemmy.world
Oh you absolutely do get hunted down by a bounty hunter and get additional charges for skipping your court date. Bail Bondsmen don't take kindly to losing money because you skipped bail. If you could avoid additional charges and getting hunted down, everybody would just run to their local bail bondsman, drop 10%, and then just skip town.
Sorry, that was worded very poorly on my part. I don't even know what I was trying to say there but it should be "as long as you show up for your court date." I think I forgot what I was typing out halfway through that sentence, hahaha.
Edit: I just figured out what happened. That was meant to be a continuation from the first sentence, not a separate thought. Rearranged and commas added for clarity: You don’t get your $300 back, you don’t get hunted down by a bounty hunter, and you don’t get additional charges for skipping out when you show up on your court date(s).
Great post and explanation.
Worth also noting the amount varies for state/federal/immigration-related bonds (generally increasing from 10/15/20%). This can vary by state law, too.
It can also vary depending on the size of the bond. A $200,000 bond may have a higher percentage than a $2,000.
Getting in lots of trouble is much more expensive than getting into little bits of trouble, in one of the few progressively-structured aspects of our criminal justice system.
Also worth noting it's probably only progressively-structured because the constitution requires it, via the 8th amendment.
Cheers, definitely predatory. Not a good look for him then.
If you have a lot of money/property you put that up for 100% of the bail amount, which you get back if you show up to court.
If you don't have enough money/property, you go to a bondsman, pay the 10% and they put up the other 90%. You never get your 10% back even if you show in court.
So if you're gonna run, you just pay the 10%, which over the decades resulted in bail amounts 10x higher than they should be.
It's basically a "poor tax" that Rudy apparently has to pay.
So the bail bondsman isn't going to come after you to get back the 90% he lost when you didn't show up for court?
The system was created when you could just move a state over and start a new life.
The bondsman can still send someone after you, but these days it's more likely they wait for the cops to find you and then sue you.
But I'm pretty sure most don't have any money at that point anyways, there's no financial incentive to spend money looking, it's just a "cost of doing business" at this point when someone runs.
But say the bondsman put up for your bail, and collected 10,000 from you plus whatever fees. If you don't go back to court that bail bondsman is out $90,000. It seems like it would be worth tracking you down to bring you in so that he could get his 90,000 back