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If that were the case, then why bother having bail hearings? Just set bail uniformly to some high number like $1M, payable only through a bail bond agency, and

If that were the case, then why bother having bail hearings? Just set bail uniformly to some high number like $1M, payable only through a bail bond agency, and let those agents bid on how much premium to charge. Credible people would pay market rate for a collateralized or uncollateralized personal loan, because that's what they could have gotten from a bank in the first place. Oh right, poor people can't get loans. You see, the problem isn't the estimation of non-appearance risk, it's that poor people are inherently more financially risky, so they get charged more for the same loan. But financial risk isn't the same as non-appearance risk. Financializing the court-appearance guarantee is imposing the cost of financial risk on some people for no reason, by demanding that they get a loan.

bradleybuda 8y ago
I like this framing, but I don't think your analysis is correct. There's no financial risk involved in making bail bond loans because it's impossible to default without skipping bail. Further, there's zero incentive to default - the money is never in the borrower's hands, so they can't recoup the principal, and the interest is prepaid, so defaulting doesn't save that payment. In essence, a bail loan is actually a perfectly secured loan - it is secured by the court holding the principal in escrow. There is no "repayment risk", only risk that the bail will be forfeited due to non-appearance, which is exactly equal to the flight risk.
philwelch 8y ago
There’s no financial risk: the bondsman pays bail directly to the court on behalf of the defendant, and the bail is returned to the bondsman upon the defendant successfully appearing. This is what gives the bondsman the legal right to apprehend the defendant if he does not appear in court. The defendant can’t take the bail money and run. If he could, bail bonds would not be a viable business. If you intend to show up to court, and can get a personal loan large enough to cover bail, of course you’re better off doing that. And if you skip bail and don’t get the money back and have no means to repay that personal loan, you carry that debt with you and you cease to have the ability to take out large personal loans, so skipping bail isn’t really a sustainable life strategy in that case, either. And yeah, I’d actually be in favor of sliding-scale bail so rich people couldn’t just pay their own bail either, though you’d need to figure out what to do if you ever arrested Jeff Bezos because I don’t think Bill Gates and Warren Buffet are gonna put their money together to be his bondsmen :)

bradleybuda 8y ago

I like this framing, but I don't think your analysis is correct. There's no financial risk involved in making bail bond loans because it's impossible to default without skipping bail. Further, there's zero incentive to default - the money is never in the borrower's hands, so they can't recoup the principal, and the interest is prepaid, so defaulting doesn't save that payment. In essence, a bail loan is actually a perfectly secured loan - it is secured by the court holding the principal in escrow. There is no "repayment risk", only risk that the bail will be forfeited due to non-appearance, which is exactly equal to the flight risk.

philwelch 8y ago

There’s no financial risk: the bondsman pays bail directly to the court on behalf of the defendant, and the bail is returned to the bondsman upon the defendant successfully appearing. This is what gives the bondsman the legal right to apprehend the defendant if he does not appear in court. The defendant can’t take the bail money and run. If he could, bail bonds would not be a viable business. If you intend to show up to court, and can get a personal loan large enough to cover bail, of course you’re better off doing that. And if you skip bail and don’t get the money back and have no means to repay that personal loan, you carry that debt with you and you cease to have the ability to take out large personal loans, so skipping bail isn’t really a sustainable life strategy in that case, either. And yeah, I’d actually be in favor of sliding-scale bail so rich people couldn’t just pay their own bail either, though you’d need to figure out what to do if you ever arrested Jeff Bezos because I don’t think Bill Gates and Warren Buffet are gonna put their money together to be his bondsmen :)