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A lot of times, when people think about bail bonds professionals they picture someone who could double as a used car salesman. And sure, thanks to Hollywood, that’s the primary image that’s put out there.

But that’s not exactly how things look in real life.

Not only does the commercial bail industry help save taxpayers tens of millions of dollars (we’ll get into that later) some bondsmen are being credited with helping track down and capturing the worst of the worst- and hand delivering them to the jail’s doorstep.

The benefits of bail bonds

When a person is arrested and hires a company to post bail bonds that company is guaranteeing the defendant will go to court and finish their case. If the defendant skips, they have 180 days to track them down and get them back in the system.

If they fail the owner of said company will need to write a very big check equal to the defendant’s original bail amount.

Suffice to say, that's a pretty hefty motivator when it comes to tracking people down- and it’s far more effective than pretrial release, which allows law breakers to be released on their own recognizance (OR).

When OR defendants skip court it becomes the county’s responsibility to track them down, and with budget cuts, squeezed resources and police departments that are sometimes operating at skeleton staffing levels- chasing down bail jumpers often falls low on the priority list.

Dollars and cents

A recent study in Texas found that failure-to-appear defendants was costing one county millions of dollars every year in administrative costs, not to mention expenses associated with trying to find them.

Defendants who are released through bail bonds companies have the highest appearance rate of any other means of pre-trial release, and this saves taxpayers big bucks in the long run.

But back to New Orleans.

Down there, police are having a heck of a time knowing who is and isn’t going to court, because the courthouse isn’t entering failure-to-appear warrant information into the system.

If a wanted fugitive is pulled over and their name isn’t on the warrant list, officers never know this person should be taken into custody.

Not only do the bail bonds companies who were hired to help these defendants keep such a list- they frequently check it twice. They’re also making active efforts to have these names added to local and national warrant databases- so bounty hunters can go after them.

In one recent instance, a bounty hunter helped track a fugitive who was hiding out in Texas. That man skipped bail after being arrested on possession of marijuana with the intent to distribute.

That same man helped locate another fugitive who didn’t go to court and seemingly fell off the face of the earth. He was captured in Indiana.

And lastly, they helped locate another man who was charged with possession of child pornography. He was tracked all the way across the Eastern seaboard before he was eventually captured in North Carolina.

How much did this recovery effort cost taxpayers? Not one single dime.