There’s another shake-up in
the bail insurance lobbyist world, due, I suppose, to a rapid decline in
America’s desire to use an antiquated, unfair, and ineffective system of
release and detention based on money. But this time the shake-up reveals more
than one issue facing the bail insurance companies. Yes, the use of commercial surety
bonds is slowly declining and that business, as it’s currently practiced, will
likely become extinct. Even bondsmen websites have re-published newspaper
stories saying as much. But the bigger issue concerns how, exactly, to deal
with the decline right now. Should they adapt, or should they fight?
The bail agents I talk to
understand that despite the decline there’s still likely some place for them in
what I call “private pretrial,” which involves persons doing the sort of risk
assessment and mitigation that courts and the general public are demanding
today. Jurisdictions across America want risk assessment, they want people who
can make recommendations to the court, and they want people who can perform at
least minimal pretrial supervision designed to mitigate known risk for public
safety in addition to court
appearance. Moreover, they want all of this for all defendants, and not simply for
the ones who can afford it. It’s the kind of stuff that pretrial services
agencies and programs do every day, but it’s only happening in about 10% of
American counties. Private pretrial, if it’s structured like our current public
pretrial programs, is a viable option for jurisdictions that don’t currently
have pretrial agencies. Indeed, we have at least one operating here in
Colorado, and as far as I know, it’s working pretty well. The bail agents who
recognize the potential for private pretrial and who are the first to market
will probably make a killing.
The problem is that there’s no
place in private pretrial for insurance company backing because a private
pretrial system wouldn’t be based on those big, arbitrary money amounts
everyone is used to. Thus, unlike bail agents, there’s simply nothing to which
the insurance companies can adapt. Accordingly, the only option those companies
have is to fight a war to keep the current system in place.
But to wage that war, the
insurance companies need bail agents. They need bail agents to faithfully repeat
what the insurance companies say about the benefits of an industry that
everyone else in America is questioning. They need bail agents to pass out
“studies” that the insurance companies know are flawed. They need bail agents to
make ridiculous statements like, “the purpose of bail is only to provide court
appearance,” or “pretrial release is a failed system.” And I’m sure they’ll
need bail agents even more in the future because they’ll come up with more studies,
craft more statements, and hire more lobbyists to keep fighting for a system
that gives the insurance companies money for essentially doing nothing.
Insurance companies need bail
agents to do everything possible to keep their minds off of the fact that the surety
bail system currently hinders release, has nothing to do with public safety,
and can hang on only through back-room political deals fashioned by those oily
lobbyists. In short, they need bail agents to fight for insurance company
profits, and never to dream of a system that doesn’t include insurance company
participation, even if that system might save the agents their own jobs.
