Whenever you get into legal trouble and get arrested, posting bail will become your priority. You can contact a reputable company like Connecticut Bail Bonds Group to help you out if you’re unable to come up with the necessary funds to pay for it.
How It Works
As soon as you’re arrested and charged with a particular crime, you’ll be remanded in custody until a trial date is set. The judge will also set a bail amount. This is the money that you must pay to secure your release from custody until your trial date. If you can’t come up with that money, contacting a bail bond company is your best option. Once you can demonstrate possession of the collateral, you’ll need to pay a certain percentage of the set bail amount to the bail bondsmen to proceed with your case. This can range anywhere from 8 to 10 percent of the bail amount. Once you’ve made this payment, the bail bondsman will then provide a promise to the court (a surety bond) guaranteeing that you’ll attend all your court dates. Failure to do so will result in automatic forfeiture of the bail.
When Are Bail Bonds Necessary?
Deciding if bail bonds are for you will depend on your situation. Generally, most people decide to opt for bail bond services based on a few factors. These include;
1)Lack of Adequate Financial Resources
This is the number one reason that drives people to contact bail bondsmen. After being arrested and charged with a crime, your first thought will be to get out of jail quickly. However, this all hinges on your ability to come up with needed bail money. If you can’t marshal your resources quickly enough, contacting a bail bond company becomes your only option. This is because such a company can handle your case swiftly and get you out of jail as long as you can provide the necessary collateral. When you take inventory of your resources and discover that you may not have cash ready at hand, contacting bail bondsmen becomes a necessity.
2) Familiarity With the Process
Unless you’re a career criminal, you’ll likely not be familiar with the ins and outs of the bail system and how to navigate them efficiently. As with any legal process, there are several ways in which things can go wrong. For example, failure to handle the necessary paperwork can prolong the bail process. This means you’ll have to stay in jail longer than you’d like. Hiring bail bondsmen ensures that such things don’t bungle your case and result in you spending unnecessary time behind bars.
In the end, whenever it comes to deciding whether or not to contact a bail bonds company, it comes down to self-preservation. Staying in jail even for a single night can present problems. For example, you may be thrown in the ‘drunk tank’ with belligerent people and get injured as a result of a fight. Similarly, if you have business interests on the outside, being in jail can seriously jeopardize them.
Deciding whether or not bail bonds are necessary is something you should always evaluate through the lens of how much it will cost you mentally and financially if you forgo it.
Deciding Bail
Bail amounts depend on the nature and severity of a crime. For example, if you’re accused of assault with a deadly weapon, expect a much higher bail amount compared to someone arrested for petty theft. While guidelines stipulate that bail amounts shouldn’t be “excessive,” they can still be significantly high.
Typically, a judge will weigh the nature of the accusation, the defendant’s financial circumstances, and the likelihood of the defendant showing up for all their court dates. However, sometimes the bail amounts for particular types of offenses are set up front. This means that you’ll get to know what to expect as soon as you’re charged with that particular crime.
Types of Bail Bonds
The arrangement described above is for surety bonds; you utilize the services of a bail bonds company to secure your release on bail. However, there are other types of bonds including:
i)Citation Release: This is simply a written legal citation. It is issued at the citing officer’s discretion. After paying the full amount of the citation, an individual then gets a citation release.
- ii) Recognizance Release: Sometimes, the judge is convinced that a defendant will show up for all their court dates, meaning such a defendant isn’t considered a flight risk.
iii) Immigration bail bonds: These work much like surety bonds except they involve non-citizens arrested for issues related to their legal status.
- iv) Federal bail bonds: These also work like surety bonds except they’re for those accused of federal crimes.
Ultimately, it all comes down to how quickly you want to be released from custody pending your trial.