Facts worth knowing
- The price is not ours to set. Premium rates are filed with the California Department of Insurance under Insurance Code §1800; discounting below the filed rate is a licensing violation.
- Every bond is a full-amount guarantee. If a defendant never comes back, the agency's exposure is the entire bail, not the 10%.
- That is why appearance rates matter more to us than volume — see how a bail bonds company makes money.
- California voters rejected the elimination of money bail in 2020 (Proposition 25), keeping the system in place statewide.
- In 2021 the California Supreme Court held in In re Humphrey that courts must consider ability to pay and non-financial conditions before setting bail an arrestee cannot afford.
- Bail agents are not law enforcement. Recovery authority in California is regulated and limited — see do bounty hunters exist in California.
What the criticism gets right
The strongest critique of money bail is that ability to pay, not risk, decides who waits in custody. Humphrey addressed part of that, and county bail assistance programs address another part. We do not think that critique is dishonest, and we structure payment plans — including 1% down — precisely because the affordability problem is real.
What it gets wrong
Commercial bail creates a private party with a strong financial incentive to make sure a defendant appears, and that party is reachable by phone at 3 a.m. Removing it does not remove pretrial detention; it moves the decision entirely to risk assessment and judicial discretion. Reasonable people land in different places on that tradeoff.