president's
messageby Ann Teague, President of BAIL Florida
We provide a service not only to our jails, but to our communities. We help to keep the jail counts down, while allowing the defendant to go home to support his family, and to help prepare for his defense. So far in our country, we are innocent until proven guilty.
We are an important part of the criminal justice system, even though we are often left out of the decision making. Our part is the appearance of the defendant to answer to the courts for the charges placed against him. If the defendant fails to appear, we go and locate him. If we are unable to find him, we pay the courts. We are accountable. Money is a great motivator! We could not stay in business, if we just sat back and did nothing.
Time and time again, reports are made comparing us to Pretrial Services, a taxpayer funded program, on which method does the best job. They don’t compare! In a study in The Journal of Law and Economics, by Eric Helland and Alexander Tabarrok, on Bail Jumping, they showed where people on surety bonds were 28% less likely to fail to appear, and if they did fail to appear, they were 53% less likely to remain at large. Their conclusion was that in reality, we were the true long arms of the law!
In July, I attended a PBUS meeting where Dr Michael Block, Ph.D., a Professor of Economics, discussed a report he had published, concerning secured release (surety bonds) vs. unsecured release (ROR or Conditional Release/Pretrial) for all large urban counties in California. The data was collected by the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics from 1990 to 2000. The outcome was not what was expected! They estimated that if the proportions released on Surety Bond and ROR/CR were reversed, there would have been over 1000 fewer FTA’s. If Surety Bonds replaced ROR’s/CR’s, they estimated over 6000 fewer FTA’s. They also said in there executive summary, that a more aggressive use of Surety Bond’s could save the taxpayers between $1.3 million and $10 million per year in the 12 largest counties, and the total costs including social costs could be over $14million to over $109 million a year.
My final thoughts are stand up and be proud of who we are. We do a job better than any other agency. I mean after all attorney’s get a pay check, the public defender gets a pay check, pretrial officers get a paycheck , why do we need to defend ourselves over getting paid!
