In many circumstances, staying prepared for the worse can make life easy, especially if you face arrest due to some criminal charges brought upon you. When you face arrest, the chances of spending time in jail looms large and only if you are aware of the process of availing bail that you can minimize or completely avoid spending time in jail or police custody. The law says that you must prove yourself not guilty after your arrest by appearing a court trial that absolves you of the charges and allows you to walk free. But legal processes and criminal proceedings can be quite a time taking and even the first time you appear in court after the arrest would take quite a few days or weeks. During this time, the police would hold you captive only to ensure that you appear in the court on time.
Avoiding jail time
Naturally, soon after your arrest, the first thing that strikes your mind is how you can avoid being in jail or police custody. To think about spending time in jail, no matter how brief it might be is like a nightmare for most people unless you are a hardened criminal. The law has suitable provision to allow people to avoid the jail term or minimize it as much as possible by availing bail.
In this article, we will discuss how bail bonds work.
What is bail?
Although the court might accept a written promise from the arrested person and order release, it happens in very rare cases for minor offenses and depends on the individual’s background. In most cases, the court has a bail process in place to accept financial security in lieu of releasing the person. The court decides the bail amount by considering the seriousness of the case, the personal background of the person, criminal record and any earlier convictions together with the earning capacity and assigns a value to the risk of releasing the person. On depositing the money which people call bail posting, the person can walk free. Breaking the promise of appearing in court can have serious consequences as not only the court forfeits the money but also gets the person arrested for evading the law.
What is a bail bond?
Like there are underwriters of insurance policies; similarly, there are bail agents licensed to issue bail bonds on behalf of arrested persons. To issue a bail bond, you must hire the services of bail agents who are ready to shoulder the risks and assure the court that their clients would abide by the bail conditions and appear in court on time and in exchange secure their release from jail or police custody.
Bail or bail bond?
Technically there is slight difference between bail and bail bonds because you can pay cash in the court to post bail, but when availing bail bonds, you pay to the bail agent who arranges for furnishing the bond on your behalf.
The method of bail posting does not affect its working because both ensure the release of the arrested person.