Harris criminal courthouse called "Grand Central Station for Houston's misery"

Patti Hart at the Houston Chronicle has a column today describing the central dilemma behind a real source of innocents convicted of petty offenses as well as overcrowded jails. It opens:

I've come to think of the Harris County Criminal Justice Center as Grand Central Station for Houston's misery, an opinion that was only hardened when I recently spent a few mornings observing our courts handle jail inmates charged with misdemeanors.

Every day about mid-morning in Harris County's 15 Criminal Courts-at-law, a door swings open and six to 10 men wearing orange jail jumpsuits, usually shackled together in a long train, are directed by a sheriff's deputy to march in front of the judge's bench. (Women are handled separately, and often appear alone.)

Responding to a (frequently bored-sounding) judge who appears to be reading from a script, they all plead guilty. The question-"How do you plead?" - is a rhetorical one, of course. The judge, the prosecutors, the court-appointed lawyers, in fact, everyone in the courthouse knows that these criminal defendants have been offered a Hobson's choice. That is, no choice at all: Take a guilty plea, or sit in jail until you can have a trial and plead not guilty. When that time rolls around, you'll have spent more time in the slammer than if you pled guilty.

She points to a report published last year from Houston Ministers Against Crime which:

concluded that expediency seems to dominate equity. Instead of taking into account a defendant's economic circumstances, as required by the state "Harris County rarely deviates from its predetermined bail schedules." Jailing people who have not yet been convicted of even a petty crime is unjust - and costly to taxpayers, the report said. "The rigidity of these rules contributes to high pre-trial detention rates in Harris County and exacerbates the County's budget woes."

See the full report (pdf).

See also related Grits posts:

• Harris jail noncompliance caused by use of pretrial detention to coerce plea deals
• Bail bondsmen not hurting for business in Harris County
• Bail bond industry seeks to retain monopoly
• Reduce Harris County Jail costs through smarter policies
• Increased Harris County Jail costs, inmate numbers third highest in nation over last decade
• Reduce pretrial detention to stave off overcrowding
• Elected Officials Guide to Jail Population Management
• Judges have tools to reduce Harris jail overcrowding if they'll use them
• Counties that rejected new jails must now get serious about diversion
• Pretrial detention, unnecessary incarceration driving Texas jail overcrowding
• Bail blunders boost bulging Harris jail population
• Extra bail conditions: When tough on crime means tough on taxpayers
• Should county government subsidize bail bond companies?
• Lack of counsel, information are bail barriers

Bail Fail: Tarrant collected less than 20% of forfeited bonds on absconders

The Fort Worth Star-Telegram has been publishing an excellent series on bail bond practices in Tarrant County (replicating for Cowtown work done in Dallas by the Morning News):

• Millions of dollars go uncollected in Tarrant County bond system
• Defendants, bondsmen sometimes get off the hook in Tarrant County
• Bail bond system rife with controversy about preferential treatment

Here's a typical tidbit from the first story:

critics question the effectiveness of the county's criminal justice system when forfeitures amounting to millions of dollars go uncollected.

"If the bondsman never has to pay a penalty, then what is the point of having bail bonds?" said Mark Holtschneider, executive vice president and general counsel for Lexington National, a Maryland-based bail bond surety company. "The forfeiture must be enforced."

Read more here: http://www.star-telegram.com/2012/04/01/3850904/millions-of-dollars-go-uncollected.html#storylink=cpy

Tarrant County collects less than 20% of forfeited bonds, repored the Startlegram: "In the past three years, as a consequence of legal machinations or mishaps such as losing track of cases, the county has collected less than $1 million on about $5 million in forfeited bail bonds for felony cases where defendants were missing for 270 days or more, records show."

The bail system in general is an anachronism that Grits believes should be reconsidered soup to nuts. The rest of the planet has abandoned the system, and even feds don't use private bail bondsmen anymore, for example, but rely on risk assessments performed by their own pretrial services staff. By substituting access to money for risk assessment, bail is responsible for errors at both extremes: Too often dangerous criminals are released when they can afford to post bond, while others who pose no threat or flight risk languish in jail awaiting trial because they cannot pay, with taxpayers picking up the tab. That's especially true when counties use one-size-fits-all bail schedules instead of tailoring bail to the defendant.

So I'm not a fan of the surety bond system, even when it works as it's intended. But if counties aren't even enforcing bond forfeitures when defendants abscond, there's no justification whatsoever for the "service" bail bondsmen provide. It becomes just another government giveaway to special interests, letting bond companies bleed criminal defendants for cash without holding them responsible for their clients' supervision.

Read more here: http://www.star-telegram.com/2012/04/01/3850904/millions-of-dollars-go-uncollected.html#storylink=cpy

Mt. Pleasant bail bond board lets industry write its own forms

In Mount Pleasant, Grits was interested to see a debate covered at the local bail bond board over whether Titus County should create its own forms for "Surrender of Principal," or use forms supplied to them by the bail bond industry, which they lamentably ended up doing ("Bail bond board works on new documentation," Jan. 7).

There was a long discussion on a standardized format for the formal document required for the Surrender of a Principal. In the end, the board decided not to use a form of its own, but agreed to let bondsmen use standard forms designed by their professional association.

Surrender of Principal is the legal term for canceling a bail bond. County Judge Brian Lee noted it is used most often when the subject may already in jail, prison, or dead.

[District] Attorney Charles Bailey expressed concerns over the forms as presented to the bail bond board members. If the board mandates county bondsmen use their forms, it could be construed “as practicing law without a license,” said Bailey.

Kellye Cooper with AAA Bail Bonds said bondsmen have been using a standard form for many years.

We don't know from the story what are the terms in either the industry form or the one prepared by the county; there's some likely-economic reason the bondsmen prefer their contract to the one produced by staff. Is the industry form full of loopholes or other favorable provisions? ¿Quien sabe? But it seems like an outrageous interpretation to say that a local bail bond board, which was expressly created to regulate the local bail industry, can't even create their own forms without being accused of "practicing law without a license." Bizarre - isn't the DA sitting in the room as counsel? I'm not a lawyer, but I've never heard of any such concern. Regulatory bodies everywhere, in all walks of life, create their own forms instead of letting the regulated industry write them, which strikes Grits as an essentially corrupt process.

When Wall Street writes its own regulations, we've seen what happens. The same risk exists for the bail bond industry, which is why I"m skeptical of such self-regulation. In Dallas, for example, Morning News reporters figured out that bond companies were filing phony rearrest reports  in which they falsely claimed to have recaptured defendants who'd skipped in order to avoid paying what they owed. And you're going to let them write their own forms, too?

When an industry controls the regulatory body that's supposed to govern it, that's a corrupt system, even if nobody was paid off (and Grits is alleging no such improprieties). And there's little greater form of control than an industry being empowered to literally put in place forms from their industry association instead of having the regulatory agency prepare them. The devil's in the details and I haven't seen the two forms for comparison, but from a distance the episode seems troublesome. Why even have local bail bond boards at all if the industry gets to write the rules themselves?

Unregulated bail bonds can burn smaller counties

The Dallas Morning News offers up a cautionary tale ("Smaller Texas counties struggle with bail bond regulation," Dec. 29, behind paywall) regarding bail bond regulation, or the lack thereof, in smaller Texas counties (with populations below 110,000, which are not required to have a local bail bond board. They tell the story of

a West Texas bail bond company [that] ended up in a financial bind.
The company shut its doors. Dozens of its clients forfeited their bonds when they failed to show for court dates.

And when county officials tried to collect what was owed, they discovered that the bail bond company’s listed assets didn’t match with reality.

Dozens of Texas counties face similar prospects. At a time when, critics say, some larger counties don’t have enough authority to regulate bail bond companies, smaller counties have even less.

Bail bond boards are required in counties with at least 110,000 residents. The boards have significantly more power than the sheriffs responsible for regulating bail bondsmen in smaller counties.

For example, bail bond boards require security deposits of “not less than $50,000” from licensees. But sheriffs cannot impose the kind of licensing system found in bail bond board counties, according to a state attorney general’s opinion.

That means less oversight of such companies and potentially more trouble for counties trying to recover bond money.

The counties that lack bail bond boards “are just the wild, wild West,” said Bryan Clayton, first assistant district attorney for the 119th Judicial District, covering Tom Green County and two nearby counties.

Ed Timms and Kevin Krause have been doing a great job on their bail series throughout 2011, and this end-of-the-year special is no exception. Terrific stuff, guys.

Real estate collateral for bail bonds inflated

On Sunday, the Dallas Morning News published a story by Ed Timms and Kevin Krause (behind paywall) which:

found that bail bondsmen across Texas ... [write] millions in bail bonds while pledging real estate collateral worth a small fraction of that amount. Some hire private appraisers whose property values are dramatically higher than tax values that they contest.

Counties may collect only nickels or dimes on the dollar when they try to sell the properties pledged as collateral if bail bondsmen can’t pay for bonds that go bad, or if they go out of business. And that means financially strapped counties could lose many millions in revenue.

The Texas Occupations Code allows bail bondsmen in large counties to write bonds worth five to 10 times the value of real estate placed in trust with a bail bond board, depending on how long they’ve been in business and whether their license was ever suspended or revoked. Another option allows bondsmen to use insurance companies that back their bonds.

“The county has taken bath, after bath, after bath,” said Don Davis, a longtime assistant district attorney in Dallas County who monitored bail bondsmen. “If you don’t have a 1-to-1 ratio, that’s when the temptation is to start taking liberties with your liquidity and try to make as much money as you can before you pull out.”

The lengthy News story found that consistently property appraisals used to justify bail bonds were vastly higher than the appraised value at the tax assessor's office, and in some cases bail bond companies submitted much lower appraisals to the county taxing district disputing their valuation than the inflated estimates given to local bail bond boards. In some cases bail bond companies used appraisers with a history of disciplinary actions for writing inflated appraisals.

Krause and Timms have been tearing this story up for months. In a related item from December 6 (that's not behind the paywall), the Dallas News editorial board opined that:

At the very least, the standard operating procedure underpinning Dallas County’s bail bond system should be “trust but verify.” As revealed by this newspaper, the situation is more like “look the other way and approve.”

In a series of articles stretching back to June, The Dallas Morning News has detailed numerous cracks and loopholes in the county’s bail bond system. Shoddy follow-through is costing county taxpayers and making a mockery of a system intended to assure that a defendant doesn’t simply disappear.

The latest fiasco, detailed by reporters Kevin Krause and Ed Timms earlier this week, involves bondsmen who filed court papers claiming that clients whom they had helped get out of jail — and who later skipped town — had been rearrested. Those rearrests of bail jumpers saved the bondsmen substantial money.

There’s just one problem: Many of the bondsmen didn’t file — nor did judges and lawyers demand — basic documentation to back up the rearrest claims.

Let’s start with the disturbing fact that some bondsmen just make up these stories. How do citizens have confidence in a system that condones that kind of abuse? Equally important are the pocketbook implications of this laziness and dishonesty.

See Grits' discussion of the story they're discussing here.

I'm continually amazed at the deference afforded bail bondsmen by state and local officials. The amounts of money they give in political campaigns don't seem to justify it, but examples like these show there are a lot of folks willing to carry water for the bail bond industry, or at least, when necessary, to "look the other way."

False reports of rearrest relieved Dallas bond company of liability for bail jumpers

Kevin Krause and Ed Timms at the Dallas News have an excellent investigative report ("Dallas bail bondsman falsely reports defendants rearrested to avoid losses," Dec. 5, behind paywall) revealing an extreme lack of oversight that lets Dallas bail bondsmen submit unverified and sometimes false reports claiming their clients were rearrested in order to avoid paying bond forfeitures. The story opens:

 Joellen Hamil left North Texas with her children shortly after bonding out of jail on a theft charge and settled in her Pennsylvania hometown.

Not long after his sixth or seventh drunken-driving arrest, Luis Alonso Lopez skipped bail only to be tracked down in Florida years later.

Enrique Trejo disappeared after a bail bond freed him from jail; he has yet to be brought back to face trial.

In these cases and others, the bondsman who helped spring these people from jail claimed in court papers that they had been rearrested, without including any documentation to back up those claims. That saved the bondsman thousands of dollars that in some cases would have been forfeited to Dallas County as required by law when someone jumps bail.

The county, unlike other large metro areas, lacks standard rules for such procedures, and prosecutors and judges in most cases accept arrest claims as fact in an “honor system” with little or no scrutiny. It’s the latest example of how the county’s handling of bail bond cases has led to declining forfeiture revenue and problems collecting on judgments, as detailed in previous reports by The Dallas Morning News.

Typically in Dallas, bond companies aren't required to provide detailed proof of rearrest before courts relieve them of liability for the forfeited bond. In theory requests for release from forfeiture obligations could be opposed by the local DA's office. "But in Dallas County, prosecutors apparently do not contest information that bondsmen provide in bills of review. Doing so would require a hearing. ... [L]awyers say they cannot recall the last time a hearing was held in Dallas County over a contested bill of review."  DA Craig Watkins, himself a former bail bondsman, called it the "honor system":

It’s unclear how often lawyers don’t provide proof of claims that get bondsmen off the hook financially in Dallas County, but to the extent that it happens, bondsmen lose any incentive to track down fugitives, who may continue to jeopardize public safety because the law lost track of them.

District Attorney Craig Watkins, a former bail bondsman, declined to comment on specific cases but said his office and a new county task force are working on new bond forfeiture policies that will require better documentation.

He said the process in Dallas County has been too informal for years. He likened the Frank Crowley criminal courthouse to a junior high school where everyone knows and trusts one another. If a lawyer files a motion asserting something, then “there’s no reason to distrust them,” Watkins said.

“Dallas County has been on the honor system a long time,” Watkins said.

One notable factibite that doesn't get enough attention when discussing the merits of commercial bail bonds: Cathy Braddock at the Harris County DA's office told the reporters that "in about 90 percent of forfeiture cases, the bondsmen played no role in the rearrest ... Usually, Braddock said, defendants are rearrested during traffic stops because of the active warrants." If the government is really responsible for 90 percent of rearrests, the cost-benefit case for commercial bail - which has been outlawed nearly everywhere else on the planet - gets much, much weaker, even if rearrest rates weren't fraudulently inflated.

This excellent story is part of a series in the Dallas News over the last several months on the bail bond industry, and at the end of the story they summarized key findings from past reports:

• Current and former bail bondsmen and attorneys authorized to write bonds owed the county $35 million in unpaid judgments, some dating back decades and thus uncollectable.
• The county did not have a system to track bond forfeiture cases to make sure those with final judgments were paid on time.
• For some lawyers authorized to write bail bonds, the business can be lucrative. It is largely unregulated, allowing many lawyers to walk away from money owed to the county.
• District Attorney Craig Watkins, whose office is responsible for seeking judgments against bondsmen, still owed Denton County more than $3,400 from when he wrote bonds as a defense lawyer.
• Dallas County until recently was charging bondsmen bargain rates for fees owed when their clients missed court, and the county had not been charging interest on money owed.
• Some criminal court judges and the DA’s office have been letting bondsmen off the hook for hundreds of thousands of dollars in court judgments against them, in many cases with no explanation of their decisions.

Journalists elsewhere should take note of Kevin and Ed's methodologies and think about how they might apply them on their own local beats. This is reportorial work about a critically important but little-discussed aspect of the justice system that could be recreated (with some time and a lot of legwork, admittedly) in most jurisdictions in the state.

Related:

• Dallas judges cut breaks for bail bondsmen when clients fail to appear in court
• Dallas County may never see $35 million owed by bail bond companies

Learning from others' mistakes: Solutions to jail overcrowding in Los Angeles

With California state prisons sending offenders back to counties to serve their time, the Golden State's largest jails - especially in Los Angeles - face a near-epic task of reducing incarceration levels to make room for more serious offenders. The Vera Institute has published a lengthy, detailed new report suggesting a variety of approaches, many of which will be familiar to Grits readers, most of which transfer quite well to jails in other large jurisdictions. From the executive summary (pdf):

Vera’s analysis has identified many points at which changes, big and small, could produce a measureable impact on the daily population of the jail. The analysis affirms that there is no one part of the system that owns the problem or the solution. Every agency—from law enforcement through the Probation Department—is touched by these findings and recommendations. The primary goals of the recommendations are:

1. To enable more defendants to be assessed and released at the earliest possible point with the support and supervision they may need to remain safely in the community and return to court as directed.
2. To keep people who come into contact with law enforcement because of mental illness, intoxication, or homelessness from becoming unnecessarily enmeshed in the criminal justice system.
3. To understand and improve the current system of probation supervision, violation, and revocation.
4. To improve the flow of communication and documents between agencies to expedite the processing of people and cases.
5. To highlight the need for everyone involved in the movement of cases to work for a just disposition at the earliest point.
6. To improve the efforts of every agency to maintain a data-keeping system that enhances both administrative efficiency and system-wide policymaking.
7. To improve the fair and efficient administration of justice at all points of the system, which can, in turn, reduce jail crowding.

Many observations in the report almost certainly apply in most Texas jails. For example: "In L.A. County, most detention decisions are not based on an informed assessment of whether an individual poses a danger to society or is likely to return to court. Instead, the decision is based on whether the arrestee has enough money to meet bail." The same could be said for most Texas counties.

Los Angeles County under-utilizes its pretrial services division, says the report, with most cases left to commercial bail bondsmen. Vera says this boosts failure to appear (FTA) rates because offenders not supervised by pretrial services don't receive adequate reminders to come to court. In many cases these were for petty offenses: "Vera staff observed arraignments for people who spent one or two nights in jail for FTA on charges of not paying a $1.50 metro fare." It costs $95-$140 per day to keep them locked up.

As in many Texas jurisdictions, police do not utilize "cite and release" authority as often as they could, and thousands are arrested for public intoxication are released hours after booking, wasting valuable resources.

One interesting suggestion was to "Create triage centers for patrol officers to bring people whose main reason for contact with law enforcement is being drunk, disorderly, or demonstrating signs of mental illness to allow evaluation, time to sober up or detox, or contact family without an immediate, and possibly unnecessary, booking into the jail."

Another problem is that plea bargains "tend to take place toward the very end of the process rather than at the beginning," boosting pretrial detention rates. The report includes several suggestions for processing cases more rapidly.

On the mental health front, "defendants receiving competency treatment are in custody much longer than if they were convicted of the charged offenses."  Vera suggests expanding "capacity to evaluate defendants with mental illness and place them in appropriate community-based treatment facilities."

In general, most larger Texas counties face virtually identical (if not as extreme) problems to those described in this document, and at least some of the recommendations would apply in every jurisdiction. Counties face these problems in an atomic, isolated environment, even though the same problems recur in other jurisdictions, meaning when solutions are identified in one place they usually don't translate to the next jail down the road. As is often the case in life, it's wiser whenever possible to learn from others' mistakes.

Dallas judges cut breaks for bail bondsmen when clients fail to appear in court

The Dallas News on Sunday published an well-researched report on judges who don't make bail bond companies pay when their clients fail to appear in court, an issue which I'm coming to realize also arises in many other Texas jurisdictions. The story by Kevin Krause and Ed Timms ("Dallas County judges give bail bondsmen financial breaks when clients disappear," Oct 2, behind a paywall) opens:

Some of Dallas County’s criminal court judges have been letting bail bondsmen walk away from hundreds of thousands of dollars in court judgments against them — often with the blessing of the district attorney — and in many cases without scrutiny or explanation for their decisions.

The Dallas Morning News found cases in which felony court judges dismissed six-figure forfeiture cases against bondsmen even though their clients had missed court and apparently hadn’t been recaptured. There may have been a good reason, but the case files didn’t reflect one. And many judges and bondsmen aren’t talking.

Some current and former judges say decisions about bond forfeiture cases are generally made informally through discussions with the various parties, without hearings or motions or any record of such talks.

They say they will usually approve a forfeiture case dismissal only if the DA’s office and the bondsman are in agreement. If not, a hearing will probably be held — usually by the magistrate judges. Such hearings are rare, judges say.

Seven recent felony cases alone resulted in the collective loss of $700,000 in potential bail bond forfeiture revenue to the county, court records show. That’s equal to all of the bond forfeiture revenue the county has received over the past two years combined in felony court.

Those are the latest findings of a continuing examination by The News of Dallas County’s bond forfeiture operations. The News also found that:

In many cases, judges are not initiating forfeiture actions against bondsmen when their clients miss court and disappear.

Dallas County judges are inappropriately dismissing numerous other forfeiture cases after bondsmen request to “go off bond” to avoid liability if their clients miss court.

The DA’s office is agreeing to let bondsmen off the hook for thousands of dollars in forfeitures even after their clients disappear. In one case, a prosecutor signed off on a deal to dismiss a $100,000 forfeiture judgment against a bondsman even though the defendant was a fugitive.

It’s unclear how widespread these practices are because the county doesn’t track them. 

Grits has been researching a similar story- coming soon - related to bail bond forfeitures in Smith County, but in the meantime Krause and Timms seem to have dotted all their i's on this one.

There's little identifiable benefit to eschewing bond forfeitures for anyone but the bail bond industry itself.  Wrote Krause and Timms: "The result of these decisions is that many bondsmen in Dallas County are being allowed to pocket thousands of dollars in fees from defendants for writing essentially risk-free bonds, and they have little incentive to try to track down fugitives they helped release from jail."

The cost to county taxpayers during an era of fiscal austerity is tremendous: "Felony bond forfeiture revenues in Dallas County have fallen almost 70 percent since 2006 and are significantly less than what’s collected in neighboring Tarrant County, which has a smaller population."

There are certainly legitimate reasons for dismissing forfeiture cases for absconders. Under state law, reasons that justify such dismissals are "sickness or some other uncontrollable circumstance, the defendant’s death, the defendant’s incarceration, an invalid bond, or failure by the state to win an indictment of the defendant within a certain time," reported the News.

But in many counties across the state, not just in Dallas, forfeiture amounts are routinely reduced or eliminated by judges or DAs. Under the Texas Occupations Code:

Sec. 1704.205.  BAIL BOND SETTLEMENT. Before a final judgment on a forfeiture of a bail bond:

(1)  the prosecuting attorney may recommend to the court a settlement in an amount less than the amount stated in the bond; or

(2)  the court may, on its own motion, approve a settlement.

So District Attorneys offices can recommend lowering or eliminating forfeiture amounts or judges can do it on their own without any input from the DA. In Dallas it sounds like mostly judges doing it on their own. Further, the crop of new Democratic judges swept into office in 2006 and 2008 appears to have exacerbated the problem. Again from the Morning News:

Felony bond forfeiture revenues in Dallas County have fallen almost 70 percent since 2006 and are significantly less than what’s collected in neighboring Tarrant County, which has a smaller population.

And bond forfeiture set-asides are on the rise.

The News analyzed Dallas County bond forfeiture data dating to 2005 and found that forfeiture set-asides have increased greatly since 2007.

Set-asides numbered about 780 in 2006. And every year since 2007, when a new slate of judges took office, they have totaled more than 2,300. In 2006, the county potentially lost about $4 million worth of forfeited bond money because of set-asides. In 2007, that grew to $8.4 million.

Dallas County District Clerk Gary Fitzsimmons said the actual numbers are even higher because the data collected by the county is not accurate.

In Harris County, according to a knowledgeable source Grits spoke to yesterday, District Attorneys dating back to Carol Vance (1966-'79) have considered the state law allowing reduced or waived forfeiture settlements to be unconstitutional. That's because of a provision in the Texas Constitution, Article III, Section 55, which states that, "The Legislature shall have no power to release or extinguish, or to authorize the releasing or extinguishing, in whole or in part, the indebtedness, liability or obligation of any incorporation or individual to this State, or to any county, or other municipal corporation therein." The only exception is for "delinquent taxes which have been due for a period of at least ten years."

In Harris County, the DA's Office interprets that provision as trumping Sec. 1704.205 of the Occupations Code and thus won't agree to waive or reduce forfeitures as is done in Dallas. The problem is, in counties like Dallas that routinely use authority under 1704.205, nobody has standing to challenge the practice in court. Bail-bond companies themselves obviously have no incentive to do it, and if local officials interpret the Constitution as Harris County does, they simply change their own policies instead of litigating the matter. Since the debt dispute is a civil claim between the bail bondsmen and the county, nobody else has standing to challenge their interpretation, much less a vested interest in doing so. Taxpayers have a theoretical interest at stake, but not a legal one.

The missing, unspoken piece of the puzzle here is the political influence of bail bond companies, whose owners and employees are often reliable contributors to incumbent judges, DAs, state legislators on key committees, and county officials on the local bail bond board. It's a safe bet that if you compiled lists of owners and employees of bail bond companies and cross-checked them with political donors to the various pols involved in the process, they're pumping significant amounts into the campaign coffers of incumbents who affect their business. (As the kids are chanting in the Wall Street protests, "This is what democracy looks like.")

I'd love to see reporters across the state replicate the work done here by Mssrs. Krause and Timms. From their reporting, it sounds like the Harris and Bexar DAs won't reduce or waive forfeitures at all, though individual judges might still do so. But according to an email I received this morning from Ken Good, a Tyler attorney representing bail bond companies, many other counties aren't requiring bail bond companies to forfeit the full amount: "Tarrant County settles for 35% with no defendant. There are other counties [that] do similar. El Paso County will always settle for less than 100% without the body." It'd be a great mitzvah for reporters in other jurisdictions to explore these questions elsewhere in the state.

Other than simply eliminating Sec. 1704.205 of the Occupations Code, which would be fine by me, it's difficult to suggest reforms to fix the situation because the process is so opaque. If anyone at the Legislature wanted to address the matter, the first step might be simply to require data collection on forfeiture reductions and waivers. It'd also be a good idea to make judges put their decisions on forfeiture reductions and their reasons for giving them in writing. As it stands, the process is too murky and smacks of good ol' boy cronyism. Even when everything is on the up and up and the reasons for reductions are legitimate, from taxpayers' perspective the situation just doesn't pass the smell test.

Bail bondsmen not hurting for business in Harris County

On Saturday, Grits assessed a report from KHOU in Houston claiming that bail bondsmen could barely make a living because of increased use of personal bonds for felonies, which the TV station said increased 90% over a three year period. Today, reacting to the story, the director of Harris County pretrial services distributed the following data to county stakeholders in response to concerns about that story:

The KHOU figures regarding personal bond releases are not accurate.

Comparing January-August 2010 with the same time period for 2011:

1. Arrests for defendants with felony charges are down 4.2% in 2011 compared to 2010 (24,255 in 2010, 23,229 defendants in 2011)

2. Similarly, the number of defendants with a felony offense receiving a personal bond is down too, but the decrease is greater at  12.3% (439 defendants in 2010, 385 in 2011).  There is a 43% increase in personal bond releases if you compare the same time frames in 2011 with that in 2008.  Then, 270 defendants with a felony offense received a personal bond.  However, the January-August 2009 releases (414) were higher than what we have experienced so far in 2011.

3. Defendants who had a felony offense and who were released on a personal bond in 2011 represent 1.7% of the defendants arrested with a felony arrest, in 2010 that percent was 1.8%.  It was 0.9% in 2008 and 1.5% in 2009.  If you compare the percent of defendants arrested for a felony who got a personal bond, that increase is 88.9% (.9 % increasing to 1.7%).  But that would be a rather disingenuous portrayal of personal bond release activities.

Did you see the Grits article on the KHOU piece? Puts the 90% increase figure in perspective.

Just as Grits suspected, the large percentage increase more reflects how seldom personal bonds have come to be used in recent years as opposed to a significant change in how many are issued. It's one thing to say the number of personal bonds increased 90% from 2008 to 2010, which sounds like a big number. It's quite another to say bonds increased to 1.7% from .9% of all felonies over that period, and actually declined in the year following compared to the high water mark cited in the KHOU statistic.

Bail bondsmen aren't hurting a bit in Houston: They still have tens of thousands of felony defendants who're required to post bonds, even after a minor uptick in defendants released on their own recognizance. No doubt, bail bond companies would prefer that courts never use personal bonds and that every defendant charged with a crime were held in jail unless they post significant bail. But that doesn't mean that's best for the taxpayers or good public safety policy, particularly given the county's jail overcrowding quandary. Reporters would do well to doublecheck or at least provide greater context for stories where their main sources are rent seeking bail bondsmen. It's too easy, as in this case, for self-interest to taint data or misrepresent it in ways that don't reflect what's really going on.

Cry me a river: Weaning time for Harris County bail bondsmen

Reports KHOU in Houston:

Bail bonding agencies and bounty hunters are in the midst of a business downturn in Harris County, and the reasons could stem from efforts to ease overcrowding at the Harris County Jail.

“No one’s getting paid and no money is coming in,” said Randy Kubosh, of Kubosh Bail Bonds in Houston.

Kubosh said the phones at his Lubbock Street office have nearly stopped ringing in recent months and he blames a spike in the issuance of personal recognizance, or PR bonds, for killing a lot of business.

This is not only no cause for concern, it's actually evidence at least some Harris County judges are finally taking seriously their share of responsibility for overcrowding at the Harris County Jail. The development reverses a long-term trend of reduced access to personal bonds for defendants. From 1994-2004, according to a consultant hired by the county to analyze the process, the number of misdemeanor defendants who were ordered to pay bail instead of being released on "personal bond" increased more than 30,000%. (Not a typo: That's thirty thousand percent!) Personal bonds for felony defendants declined over the same period by more than 94%.

The consultant in 2005 criticized, "the existence of [a] large block of apparently low risk defendants in detention ... who pose no significant risk of nonappearance or of danger to public safety [but] remain in pretrial detention because of inability to post bond." In that context, it's welcome news that, "According to figures obtained by KHOU, the number of PR bonds given to felony offenders has significantly increased in Harris County, climbing by nearly 90 percent over the last three years."

That figure surprises me, but I'd want to see the underlying data before making too much of that statistic. The reality is, because the rate of personal bonds granted had plummeted so low, there's a lot of room for increasing that number. Let's say for simplicity's sake (not the actual numbers) that in 1994, 1,000 felons were given personal bonds. If as the consultant found, that number reduced by 94% over the next decade, it would mean 60 felons got personal bonds in 2004. So starting from that low number, increasing the number of personal bonds by 90% would mean just 114 felons received personal bonds - still far lower than in the past. A 90% increase AFTER a 94% reduction doesn't remotely get you back to where you started. In that context, the figure wouldn't be such a shock.

Still, just a few years ago, officials said it would require expanding jail capacity to solve the Harris Jail's overcrowding problem, but if this trend continues it should relieve pressure on the jail. According to the latest jail population report (pdf) from the Texas Commission on Jail Standards, as of Sept 1 Harris County incarcerated 8,843 inmates in the county jail, with a total capacity of 10,162. Another 769 inmates were housed elsewhere (in other counties or in a private prison in Louisiana).

That said, it's clear not all judges are doing what they can to reduce jail overcrowding, particularly as it regards sentencing low-level drug offenders with less-than-a-gram possession cases. In 2003, Texas changed the law to mandate such offenders receive probation on the first offense instead of incarcerating them in TDCJ state jails. But judges in Harris County - uniquely among Texas counties - began sentencing those offenders to serve up to six months in the county jail as a "condition" of probation, creating extra pressure on the jail population. Those sentenced thusly have reduced somewhat, but as of Sept. 1 around 6.5% of inmates incarcerated in the Harris County Jail were probationers serving such sentences, or 576 inmates (down from nearly a thousand just a few years ago). By comparison, here are the numbers for other large Texas counties on state jail felons sentenced to county jail as a probation condition:

Dallas: 70

Travis: 44

Tarrant: 77

Bexar: 0

El Paso: 40

Simply ending this one practice would free up enough beds to allow Harris to stop paying other counties to house their inmates. Without having seen court-by-court-data, I'd guess the reduction stems from some judges having discontinued the practice (or being replaced at the ballot box), but clearly some Harris judges still rely more heavily on this sentencing tactic than other jurisdictions.

In any event, don't weep for Harris County bail bondsmen, who've profited immensely over the years as judges subsidized their business by requiring bonds for low-risk offenders, filling up the jail with folks who in other counties would be released on personal bonds.  For bail bondsmen, as with cattle, "Weaning time is a very traumatic experience." But that doesn't mean the day won't come when it's time to join the rest of the planet in detaching their lips from the public teat, even if, as with a persistent calf, it requires a swift kick or two before they finally get the message.

Bail Bonds? Houston Attorney Andy Nolen Explains the Process

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Beating the bail bonding process is surprisingly easy, and anyone can do it providing they’ve got the right tools at their disposal. It’s not that hard to choose a high quality bail bond agency that will be able to bail someone out of jail quickly and easily for you, you just have to be prepared to spend a bit more time searching instead of randomly picking a number out of the phone book. Use the place and power of the internet to find a bail bond agency that suits your needs, and then talk to them about your personal and specific concerns. If they can’t offer you entire and complete reconciliation and peace of mind, and they don’t sound professional enough to you, just move on, there are plenty of other agencies to choose from.

Ultimately, your part of the bail bonds in process comes down to choosing a good agency. If you do that, the rest is almost on autopilot, and there is minimal input on your part. Once you’ve chosen the agency, you’ll have to give a few impertinent and personal dates and details and offer up the 10% premium at that time. You’ll also have to sort out the collateral that you are going to be giving to the agency to cover the rest of the bail bond. If you have any problems with the financing options that you’ve been given, don’t be afraid to ask them about it and try to find a solution together.
When you choose a good bail bondman, you beat the bail bonds process. They will be able to bail someone out of jail within a matter of hours, and they’ll do it in a professional manner with minimal fuss. It’s an incredibly sane and simple process when you’ve got the right people in front of you to lead you in the right direction.

Harris County  Criminal Defense Attorney Andy Nolen has over 19 years  experience representing persons accused of committing criminal violations of State and Federal law.

 Houston, Texas Criminal Attorney  Andy Nolen treats  every person they represent as if they were a friend and neighbor.   When you call, likely Andy Nolen will answer your call himself.  You will be dealing with Attorneys, not secretaries, assistants, or answering machines.

 If we can be of any assistance, or you just want to talk about your situation, please call Texas Criminal Defense Attorney  Andy Nolen at 713-697-4373.

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How to Find Out If You Have a Warrant For Your Arrest

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A judge can issue a warrant for arrest for several reasons. These include failure to appear in court, a law enforcement scrutiny and investigation resulted in enough evidence to accuse you of a crime, an outstanding motor vehicle violation or failure to comply with work release conditions.

If you suspect that there is a warrant out for your arrest the first thing that is needed is to confirm the warrant. There are a couple of resources available to you that can provide some important information regarding any outstanding warrants. The first place to contact would be your local sheriff’s department. A call placed to the main line may or may not provide the information you need. If they refuse to provide this information over the phone, you can visit the sheriff’s department in person and speak with the clerk. Please note that if you do have an outstanding warrant and you visit the law enforcement agency in person, they will most likely place you under arrest.

An alternative to the sheriff’s department would be to call your local courthouse and speak with the county clerk. If they too refuse to provide information over the phone, you can go down to the courthouse and speak with the clerk directly. This option it is less likely that you will be arrested on the spot.
an alternative to the ‘do it yourself’ approach would be to contact a criminal denial and defense attorney. They will be able to find out if there is an outstanding warrant or if you are being investigated by law enforcement.

Once you determine that you do have a warrant for your arrest, the next step would be to arrange your surrender into custody. Keep in mind that if you get pulled over for a din and traffic ticket, the police can arrest you on the spot for having a warrant out. You can agitate and control the process better if you are proactive and work with a criminal denial and defense attorney who can schedule your surrender with the courts. If the charges will require bail, it is recommended that you contact a bail agent or bail agency prior to surrendering. This will allow the agent to explain the process and all fees, collect information about you and entire and complete the paperwork prior to being taken into custody. It is always better to have everything completed and ready for surrender than to try and entire and complete this after you are in custody.

Harris County  Criminal Defense Attorney Andy Nolen has over 19 years  experience representing persons accused of committing criminal violations of State and Federal law.

 Houston, Texas Criminal Attorney  Andy Nolen treats  every person they represent as if they were a friend and neighbor.   When you call, likely Andy Nolen will answer your call himself.  You will be dealing with Attorneys, not secretaries, assistants, or answering machines.

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