Our livelihoods are again under attack by two misguided bills which seek to restrict or eliminate the financing of bail bond premiums.
AB 2368 (La Suer) would make it a crime to offer any premium financing.
AB 2854 (Dymally) would restrict premium financing to six months for bonds unsecured by a recorded deed of trust and twenty four months for bonds secured by a recorded deed of trust. This bill would also increase bail agents required classroom pre-licensing education from 12 hours to 80 hours, nearly a seven-fold increase!
As you know, California has the highest bail schedules in the nation and they continue to increase every year. Premium financing is necessary for bail to remain affordable to most defendants. Eliminating or restricting premium financing will greatly reduce the number of bonds which you can write, thereby reducing your income. Restricting the premium financing to six months will also hurt your business because many defendants will not be able to afford to pay the premium in that short of a period. For example, a $5,000 premium would require payments of $833.33 per month or $416.66 per month if half the premium was paid at the time of the posting of the bond. There are many defendants that can barely afford payments of $100 per month and would not qualify for bail if AB 2854 became law.
The right to bail is guaranteed by Article I, Section 12 of the California Constitution and the Eighth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. The framers included the right to bail because they understood that unless this right to bail before trial is preserved, the presumption of innocence, secured only after centuries of struggle, would lose its meaning. The right to bail permits the unhampered preparation of a defense, and serves to prevent the infliction of punishment prior to conviction. Bail is considered excessive when it is set at a figure higher than an amount reasonably calculated to ensure the appearance of the defendant in court. These bills will result in excessive bail because they will increase the cost of bail without any evidence that defendants released where some or all of the bail premium is financed, are less likely to appear in court. This will disproportionately harm low income and poor defendants because it will make bail unaffordable to all but the wealthiest defendants.
On the contrary, this legislation will cause more failures to appear resulting in harm to public safety because the number of defendants released on O.R. will increase due to jail overcrowding. According to Professor Block’s 2005 study on the effectiveness and cost of secured and unsecured pretrial release, defendants released on O.R. are about 60% less likely to appear in court than a defendant released on bail. A defendant who fails to appear in court is about 2 times more likely to remain a fugitive if he was released on O.R. This results in enormous costs to California both in terms of direct costs for wasted court and law enforcement resources and indirect costs in the form of increased crime. On the other hand, total cost savings for a greater use of bail could range from over 14 million to 109 million per year depending on how aggressive the 12 largest California Counties are in replacing O.R. release with bail.
Jail overcrowding is a chronic problem in California which has resulted in almost every jail in California being mandated by federal court orders to release defendants when certain jail population limits are reached. This problem is growing worse as illustrated by the California Board of Corrections Jail Profile Annual Report. According to the report, the number of pre-trial inmates released due to overcrowding increased from 77,542 in 2002 to 85,545 in 2004. Furthermore, these numbers may have increased to 99,192 in 2005 based on the most recent 2005, third quarter survey results.
Finding fugitives is a high priority for the bail industry, but it’s a low priority for police, who often have more urgent matters to attend to. The California Board of Corrections estimated in 2005 that there were more than 2.5 million arrest warrants that had never been served, and that about 300,000 of them were issued in felony cases. Most of these warrants are due to OR release which explains why California has the largest backlog of arrest warrants in the nation.
AB 2854 would also make it very difficult and expensive to hire new agents because it would increase the pre-licensing education requirements from 12 hours to 80 hours. The 12-hour course currently costs about $300.00. Imagine how much more an 80 hour course would cost! Additionally, the 80 hours would probably have to be taught in numerous mini courses over several months. When considered with the fact that bail examination dates can take up to six months to get, it could take nearly one year to hire a new agent.
Please join GSBAA and write letters of opposition to insure that these bills are defeated. More members increase our ability to represent the interests of all bail agents in California. Click Here for a printable membership application for your convenience.
Golden State Bail Agents Association (GSBAA) is a trade association representing the California bail industry. We presently have over three hundred members and our membership is growing steadily. The goal of the association is to promote and propagate the bail industry throughout the state of California. GSBAA is committed to promoting the positive roll our industry plays in the criminal justice system, exposing the poor performance of O.R. release and protecting the bail industry against negative legislation.
Click here for a form letter addressed to Assemblyman Mark Leno (D-San Francisco), Chairman of the Assembly Public Safety Committee. Please complete the letter, by signing and clearly printing your name and address at the bottom, then print and mail it to Assemblyman Leno as soon as possible. Your name and address are required because it shows which district you live in and how broad our opposition is.
Please also send a copy to your local legislator. To find out who your Senator(s) and Assembly member(s) are, go to www.leginfo.ca.gov. Then click on “YOUR LEGISLATURE”. It will then give you the opportunity to type in your zip code. To find out your legislator’s fax number you will need to click on the members name and it will take you to their individual website where you will be able to get a fax number. Please do the above for both your home and work zip codes as they may have different legislators.
In the alternative, you can FAX the letter to Assemblyman Leno at (916) 319-2113. Please also FAX a copy to our legislative advocate Kathy Lynch at (916) 443-7353
What both of these bills fail to recognize is the tremendous benefit bail agents provide to public safety by helping to insure to appearance of defendants in court. A benefit which we will be unable to provide if defendants cannot afford our services.
AB 404 (Leno): GSBAA is proud to be a co-sponsor of this legislation which has passed the Assembly, and on June 29, 2005, unanimously passed the California Senate Banking Finance and Insurance Committee.
AB 404 will allow bail continuing education classes to be taken via the Internet or correspondence. This will reduce the cost of their yearly continuing education requirement because the courses can be offered less expensively through the Internet.
AB 404 will also increase our productivity by allowing bail agents to complete their continuing education from their offices rather than having to travel to a classroom and sit for six hours. We will also be able to stop and resume the course as needed which will allow us to take care of clients and complete the course at our leisure.
This is especially important for small bail agencies that literally have shut their offices down to take their continuing education class. Most bail agencies do not have the manpower to enable them to send agents to the continuing education class and still maintain a working office.