Get Bail, Leave Jail: America's Guide to Hiring a Bondsman, Navigating Bail Bonds, and Getting out of Custody before Trial

By S.J. Plotkin and John Rorabaugh

When you or someone you care about is incarcerated, your priority is to secure a safe release as soon as possible. This can be overwhelming. You may feel rushed and might make bad decisions based on incomplete or inaccurate information-decisions that carry serious long-term consequences.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Identity Publications
• Release date: Sep 1, 2021
• ISBN: 9781088001363

S.J. Plotkin

S.J. Plotkin is the founder of Angels Bail Bonds, a prominent Southern California bail bonds service. As a third-generation participant in the legal and criminal justice system, he brings many decades of experience assisting the release of tens of thousands of inmates from jail before trial. Since 1958, his family has handled some of the largest bail bonds in the United States and has worked hard to develop creative and caring solutions for uncommon client situations.If you or a loved one gets arrested in California and needs expert help from a seasoned bail agent, get in touch at www.angelsbailbonds.com.

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Preface

After an exhaustive search among the existing information on bail bonds in America, it became clear there was little available to aid, educate, and guide ordinary people in a time of need through the release of their loved ones from jail.

When someone you care about is taken into custody, the most common priority is to expedite that individual’s safe release. Rash or hasty decisions based upon incomplete or inaccurate information may lead to critical mistakes that negatively affect the defendant in the long term.

The arrest of a loved one is very stressful, and it is made all the more so because most people don’t understand how to navigate America’s criminal justice system. By choosing to post bail, families seek to ensure the safety of the defendant as well as provide the time and space to devise the best course of action for their defense.

The bail bond process also benefits the courts. When detention facilities are freed from the burden of inmates awaiting trial, defendants are not rushed through the judicial system so hastily. Less taxation on the system affords greater opportunity for the defendant to confer with legal counsel and seek the most auspicious course of action, maximizing their chances of the fairest and most favorable outcome.

Whether this book has found you in the midst of a bail-related emergency or not, it serves as a comprehensive but digestible guide to make better decisions and avoid being taken advantage of. Fortify yourself now with the knowledge to make the best decision should the unplanned need for bail ever occur in your life.

And if this book does find you in the time of a personal emergency, in a frantic search for what to do next, please turn to Appendix I: Bail Bond Quick Reference Guide and Appendix II: Glossary of Bail Terms, which follow the body content of this book starting on page 111. They give you a brief summary of the most important terms to know and next steps to take when every moment counts. When you have more time, come back and peruse the rest of the book to gain a better overall understanding of the options in your situation.

Introduction

Most people never consider the possibility of being arrested or even that they could ever be accused by a police officer of breaking the law. The average person doesn’t imagine ever needing to keep a bail agent or criminal defense attorney on speed dial. After all, who, except for those that have already spent considerable time in jail, expects to get arrested? But life has a way of taking unprecedented turns in a heartbeat, leaving the average joe scrambling to make the right decisions.

Well, let me ask you this. Do you consider it prudent to put smoke detectors in your home or buckle your seatbelt when you go for a drive, even if you have never personally experienced a house fire or car accident? A responsible and informed person takes measures to protect themselves and the ones they love from problems long before they arise. Criminal defense is no different.

Casual drinkers don’t generally expect that they will be arrested for a DUI when their night on the town begins. It is, however, popular banter in the bar scene to joke about knowing a good bail agent, just in case. What they don’t realize is that even though someone feels sober enough to drive, they may still get pulled over and tested as being over the legal blood alcohol limit. Or, maybe, the officer could deem that they were driving impaired after pulling them over for a fix-it ticket. The officer could still arrest them, even if they were under the legal limit. Worst of all, they might get involved in a deadly accident on the way home through no fault of their own and have their drinking be blamed for it.

There is no guarantee that any American can’t become one of the many new statistics each year who happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, leading to suspicion about their involvement in a crime. For these reasons and more, it’s prudent for all Americans to have a reputable lawyer and bail agent in mind before they ever need them.

For most Americans, the odds are high that they have little previous experience with or understanding of the situation they are in when the need for a bail agent arises. It’s normal to feel lost or confused. The criminal justice and bail bonds industries are complex and fraught with misunderstandings.

Bail agents experience the best and worst of defendants during moments when they feel backed into a corner and are desperate for support. Some people get locked up through plain bad luck. Some fear the law after missing their court hearing and go on the run, which never turns out well. Such unfortunate scenarios are especially common for people who have an English-language barrier or who don’t know how to ask for help from the right people.

At Angels Bail Bonds, it isn’t uncommon for our customers to have charges of moving violations like driving without a license, invalid registration, or failure to appear. They insist to us, I took care of everything the way I was supposed, only to then find out I have a $30,000 bail amount from the 1990s still on my record. They didn’t even realize that they had a warrant on them for decades. They simply hadn’t had any other dealings with the law that would bring this dangerous fact to their attention.

In our practice, we routinely deal with bonds that arise through misunderstanding, miscommunication, or lack of organization. Many of these charges could have been avoided if the defendant had received the proper guidance or support. Even larger bonds can stem from disagreement in what should be simple matters, such as unpaid taxes. There was a multi-million-dollar bond we did (one of the largest in the United States in 2014) for this reason. There was also the time we bailed out the King of Pop, Michael Jackson, for $3 million in 2005 before he was found not guilty of 14 charges.

In yet another case, the defendant gave us a cherry Ferrari 456GT with low miles and a couple thousand in back registration fees as collateral for the bail premium. It turned out that he had failed to communicate with a casino his disagreements about the extent of his gambling debts. The casino pressed charges without his knowledge. It turned into a warrant for his arrest, and he was remanded to custody and extradited from California to Nevada.

We’ve seen, many times, how quickly the pressure of a first-time arrest can escalate into a series of bad decisions that wreck a person’s life. An accusation, if mishandled, could become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Once someone loses their job for not showing up to work after incarceration or for having a criminal record follow them around for their life, they are statistically more likely to commit crimes and lose more and more control over their life.

Defendants in criminal cases, even the ones who are found guilty in a court of law, are usually not bad people. Often though, the stress causes bad decisions that pile up until things get out of control. In the bail industry, we refer to these bad decisions as the poor judgment chain. Once found guilty of a crime, even a minor one, the likelihood of re-arrest increases drastically. Working with the incarcerated has helped us see things from their perspective and strategize for a more proactive outcome.

The role of the bail agent is to stand supportively with their clients as a deterrent in this path of self-destruction, hopefully intervening in such a way as to promote a better future. If we are able to step in and disrupt the poor judgment chain, better decisions can be made, small crises can be averted, and the public interest can be served.

In our bail dealings, we’ve assisted more than 10,000 families and worked alongside countless attorneys and law enforcement professionals. Many of our clients have voiced the same questions and concerns about bail and the confusing aspects surrounding it. The book you are reading is intended to help those in need, regardless of their professional background or relationship to the incarcerated.

Our Family History in Bail

The bond industry goes back three generations for me. In fact, I was born into it. My family has worked with bail and the law for nearly 70 years, starting with my grandfather, Larry Plotkin, who passed the bar in 1951. Grandpa Larry went on to spend over 30 years as a Superior Court judge in Downey, California. He passed his passion for the law onto my father, Dorry Plotkin, who eventually started Plotkin Bail Bonds in Norwalk, California. The bail bond industry even brought my parents together when my mother helped my father translate between him and his Spanish-speaking customers. Mom continues, to this day, to help us in our work with bail bonds. She can be spotted cruising to various jails or courthouses in Southern California with her trusty canine companion, Max.

Throughout my childhood, the bail lifestyle exposed me to things most kids never see, such as the inside of jails and courtrooms. This unique experience taught me the ins and outs of the American criminal justice system, from the ugly realities to the moments where hope in the process is restored and freedom finally granted. When I turned 18, I passed my bail exams and became a licensed bondsman like my father before me. My siblings, Josh and Kristy, and their mother, Bonnie Merrick (who helped raise me to be the upstanding and loving gentleman I am today), are licensed bail agents as well. As you can see, it is truly a family business and calling for us.

It has become our custom and ambition at Angels to write bonds other bail companies won’t (or, more likely, can’t). There is a fair degree of creativity, innovation, and strategy required to extract the right information from an individual or various parties in order to underwrite seemingly risky bail in tangible ways.

Often, potential clients will call, ask the price of bail, hear the numbers, and quickly hang up on the assumption that they don’t have a chance of being able to pay for it. However, it is our incumbent role to help, asking targeted questions and leading the clients to dig deeper and think harder about what they could do to get their loved ones out. We have made it part of our mission to provide options for people who can’t easily pay the cost of bail, no matter how large or small the full amount might be.

For example, to increase the chances of receiving an affordable bail amount, a close relative of the accused with a union job could act as an indemnitor to guarantee an appearance in court. The logic of the courts goes that a union employee is more stable in their employment. Alternatively, we’ve had religious leaders serve as indemnitors guaranteeing an appearance in court, even though they may not have had much money. In the eyes of the court, the societal repercussions of a defendant letting their church down could prove more costly to them than any financial sum.

Even recently, we worked with a man on disability who could not afford the bail bond premium. Understandably, he did not want to be behind bars and away from his family. We were able to work out a barter agreement where he could use his previous professional paving experience to serve as a consultant on improving the grounds around our former office in Santa Ana, California. In the end, everyone got what they needed, and one less person had to worry about the loss of their freedom. We’ve made similar arrangements with painters and handymen who came to us in dire straits. That’s the way my father ran things, and it’s a commonality and approach that we proudly carry forward.

Although our primary experience with bail lies in California—particularly in areas like Orange County, Los Angeles County (which hosts 20% of all bail cases in the U.S. every year), San Bernardino County, and Riverside County—you can apply most of what we know and what is covered in this book to all of California and throughout the United States in general. Read this book with the caveat that everyone’s case is unique, and there are no one-size-fits-all solutions. Please reach out to your local bail bonds agency with your specific questions, as they should be happy to assist you in answering them. Alternatively, feel