Adams, Broomfield, and Weld County Bail Bonds

Most people are aware that if they are arrested for driving under the influence or assaulting someone that they are going to be taken to the city or county jail. There, they’ll be processed before being offered bail. If they can’t afford to pay the full bail amount they then have the right to engage the services of a bail bondsman to help. But what if you or your loved one is not arrested for violating state or local laws? What if you or they are arrested for violating federal laws? Is the process the same? Are they taken to the same jail and processed in the same way? And most crucially, what about bail? Does it work the same way as it does for violations of state law?

Just about everyone we encounter at Rapid Release Bail Bonds is aware of the right to bail. But that’s not because they all paid close attention in social studies class. Instead, it’s because anyone who has ever watched Law and Order (or a hundred other police procedurals on TV over the past half century) has seen and heard bail discussed a thousand times. It’s part of the American vernacular. But while most everyone is aware of bail as a concept they’re usually a bit short on understanding the specifics. For instance; are juveniles eligible for bail in Colorado? If you asked 100 people on the streets of Denver that question you’d likely get 99 glazed looks.

For years now self-proclaimed “progressives” have been trying to put one over on the American public. This ongoing scam goes by the name “Bail Reform” and, like cultural termites, its advocates have been working tirelessly behind the scenes to promote an increasingly bizarre and untenable array of proposals aimed solely at putting the bondsman out of business.

For a time their notion of replacing bail with pretrial computer algorithms (that leverage big data to determine whether a person should be released or held pending their court date) gained quite a head of steam. So much so that several states, including California, adopted some variation of the concept.

Fortunately, a number of organizations who were at first gung-ho in their support of “risk assessment algorithms” (as they’re called) have finally seen the light. And in a major rebuke they, in concert with bail bonding companies, have formed a united defense against this short-sighted and fatally flawed system.

If you love fugitives walking the streets you’ll love the various efforts at bail reform being enacted across the country. One of the latest and most head-scratching of these efforts is that enacted in El Paso County, Texas. The good folks in that southern Texas county were anxious to address what they were told were injustices in the cash bail system. While most believed any changes would take the form of identifying those being wrongly held and rectifying the situation, what they got instead was a wholesale abandonment of the centuries old bail system and its replacement by a promise. Under the new system, in order to gain release, the defendant only has to promise to pay the bail amount if he or she fails to appear in court. And of course, no defendant would dare break such a promise. Would they?

Winston Churchill once famously said “Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others.” The same could be said for cash bail. While it’s certainly not a perfect system no one has come up with a better way to safeguard the presumption of innocence. Remember, in the American legal system a person is presumed innocent until proven guilty. Because of that forcing someone to molder in jail until they can have their day in court is extremely problematic from a legal perspective. At the same time however, simply letting people go and taking their word that they’ll show up to face the charges against them is also a dubious proposition. Bail bonds allow the innocent to remain free while awaiting trial and provides an incentive for the accused to fulfill their obligation to appear in court.

When a person is arrested on suspicion of committing a crime it sets in motion a series of events. Sometimes the person is simply fined and released. Sometimes they are charged but released on their own recognizance. Other times the police - working from an established “bail schedule” - inform them how much bail they or a loved one working with a bondsman will need to pay in order to secure their release. And still other times the suspect is held for a bail hearing before a judge or magistrate. At such hearings bail may be set, negotiated or denied. But why is it that some defendants are allowed to post bail after being arrested and others need to wait for a bail hearing?

Getting arrested is confusing, embarrassing, scary, infuriating, inconvenient and expensive. Fortunately in the US we have a bail system that allows the accused to secure their release while awaiting their day in court. In some cases bail may only be a couple of hundred bucks. In other cases however, it may be $50,000 or more, depending on the charge.

In most cases where large amounts of money are involved it’s common for the accused to contact a loved one who, in turn, contacts a bail bondsman for assistance. But how is the amount of the bail determined in the first place? Do the police just pull a number out of thin air? Not exactly. In most cases the amount is predetermined and specified on what’s called a “bail schedule”.

The Constitution prohibits the imposition of unreasonable bail amounts but other than that is silent on the issue. This absence of strict federal guidance has resulted in a situation where bail bonding means different things in different states.

Recently, a growing number of jurisdictions across the country have adopted what are called “bail algorithms” which are touted as a way to ensure everyone pays a fair bail amount, but which have been roundly criticized for their lack of transparency among other things. While they haven’t appeared in Adams County, Broomfield County, Weld County or Denver just yet, their adoption here may not be far off and so it’s an issue worth exploring.