Are Bail Bonds Libertarian?

Miscellaneous General
1

I work as a bail bondsman and I’ve been wondering if its a libertarian profession. My job would not exist if there was no government, but I am not directly employed by the state. For those who don’t know how bail bonds work, say if someone gets arrested and has a 100,000 bail they can either sit in jail until their arraignment a few days later, or they can post a bond with a bail agent which guarantees the 100,000 liability with the court that the person will make all of their court appearances. The fee we charge is 10% which is mandated by the California Department of Insurance. So basically you’d pay 10,000 to have your freedom while you fight your case.

In an anarcho-capitalist society there wouldn’t be jails, so there wouldn’t be bail bonds, so is it libertarian to be a bail bondsman?

2

How do you know that? Bounty Hunters existed in the “Wild West” before government arrived. Perhaps bail bondsmen would in a modern free society.

3

Just curious, how much discretion do you use when floating someone a bail bond? Since your 10% fee is state-mandated, you seemingly don’t have any room to price in any differing risk. What kind of research do you do on an individual to determine whether his flight risk is small enough to justify taking him on? Do you employ any kind of sliding scale between your potential fee and the perceived risk level?

Thanks!

4

In an anarcho-capitalist society there wouldn’t be jails

This is surely wrong. Someone asked me a question about prisons yesterday and I will get back to both of these when I have time. You should read Wollstein’s Society Without Coercion, especially from p. 37 on about the penal system.

5

In For a New Liberty Rothbard says that the point of the penal system is to restitute the victimed party, and not to incarcerate someone for the benefit of “society.” There would probably be jails, where people are held for short periods, but there definitely wouldn’t be prisons.

Bounty Hunters aka Fugitive Recovery Agents are hired to bring in wanted men, men who have escaped the law. They exist because there is an authority that can put a price on someones head, I don’t know if this would exist in an ancap society. Just to be clear, though we work with bounty hunters when someone skips bail, bail bonds and bounty hunting are separate professions, although some people do both.

Back in the old days, like 10 years ago, there was a lot less competition in the bail industry with fewer agents, so our underwriting standards were a lot higher. Back then we would always get 10% full premium up front and would always take collateral. Since there is a lot more competition now, sometimes we will do bonds without collateral and we will take payments on the premium. We usually only take collateral on bonds over 25,000, except on domestic violence bonds which are 50,000 which we usually dont take collateral for. The reason is because anytime the police are called on a DV call they HAVE to arrest somebody, often times no crime was committed but since they were called out they are legally obligated to arrest somebody. Sometimes an observer will call the cops on them, or someone will call out of fear or whatever. Often times I bail out the abused party, like a wife who was beaten by her husband or vice versa. Its fucked up. Since very few of these cases go to trial they are a low risk bond. Also at some point someone used prop 103 as an excuse to be able to charge 8%, so sometimes to be competative we will do a bond for 8%. Usually we tell people we will do their DV bond for 8% up front so that we dont lose the bond to another agency.

We try to get as much information about a person as we can before we bail them out. We use irbsearch.com which gives their credit without touching their score, gives their property info and lists known associates. We use realquest.com to check the equity on their property. We like people to be stable with jobs and families and history, something to keep them where they are.

6

TY for a most informative post

7

Well you don’t put people in jail, you help them stay out of it (until the trial). I’d say that is libertarian.

Besides better a statist penal system with bails than one without them. Just the other day I was reading how they are introducing a law in Russia to encourage bails to replace pre-trial detention for “economic crimes” as part of a programme of liberalization. Makes sense.

8

Right now, people post bail to stay out of jail before trial, right? But jailing someone before they’re tried and convicted is a clear violation of the non-aggression principle.

Accordingly, I’d argue that you wouldn’t need bail bonds once state aggression is largely done away with.

9

Jailing someone who is not guilty is a violation of the non-aggression principle. Wether it is done before or after the trial.

Kidnapping someone who is guilty is OK.

10

If you didn’t hold suspects before trial they would just flee.

11

The bail system is un-libertarian.

Exhibit A.

…

It should be clear that no man, in an attempt to exercise his right of self-defense, may coerce anyone else into defending him. For that would mean that the defender himself would be a criminal invader of the rights of others. Thus, if A is aggressing against B, B may not use force to compel C to join in defending him, for then B would be just as much a criminal aggressor against C. This immediately rules out conscription for defense, for conscription enslaves a man and forces him to fight on someone else’s behalf. It also rules out such a deeply-embedded part of our legal system as compulsory witnesses. No man should have the right to force anyone else to speak on any subject. The familiar prohibition against coerced self-incrimination is all very well, but it should be extended to preserving the right not to incriminate anyone else, or indeed to say nothing at all. The freedom to speak is meaningless without the corollary freedom to keep silent.

If no force may be used against a noncriminal, then the current system of compulsory jury duty must also be abolished. Just as conscription is a form of slavery, so too is compulsory jury duty. Precisely because being a juror is so important a service, the service must not be filled by resentful serfs. And how can any society call itself “libertarian” that rests on a foundation of jury slavery? In the current system, the courts enslave jurors because they pay a daily wage so far below the market price that the inevitable shortage of jury labor has to be supplied by coercion. The problem is very much the same as the military draft, where the army pays far below the market wage for privates, cannot obtain the number of men they want at that wage, and then turns to conscription to supply the gap. Let the courts pay the market wage for jurors, and sufficient supply will be forthcoming.

If there can be no compulsion against jurors or witnesses, then a libertarian legal order will have to eliminate the entire concept of the subpoena power. Witnesses, of course, may be requested to appear. But this voluntarism must also apply to the defendants, since they have not yet been convicted of crime. In a libertarian society, the plaintiff would notify the defendant that the latter is being charged with a crime, and that a trial of the defendant will be underway. The defendant would be simply invited to appear. There would be no compulsion on him to appear. If he chose not to defend himself, then the trial would proceed in absentia, which of course would mean that the defendant’s chances would be by that much diminished. Compulsion could only be used against the defendant after his final conviction. In the same way, a defendant could not be kept in jail before his conviction, unless, as in the case of police coercion, the jailer is prepared to face a kidnapping conviction if the defendant turns out to be innocent.[7]

[7] This prohibition against coercing an unconvicted person would eliminate the blatant evils of the bail system, where the judge arbitrarily sets the amount of bail, and where, regardless of the amount, poorer defendants are clearly discriminated against.

12

Yes, let’s have a trial, and let the suspect flee the day before the verdict, if the trial is not going well.

13

In For a New Liberty Rothbard says that the point of the penal system is to restitute the victimed party, and not to incarcerate someone for the benefit of “society.” There would probably be jails, where people are held for short periods, but there definitely wouldn’t be prisons.

Josh, there is no doubt in my mind that both long-term prisons would exist and that bondsmen would not be out of a job. The overall market may be smaller with the removal of victimless crimes, the ability to come to an immediate reconciliation with a victim, and the lack of mandatory minimum sentencing, but they would exist nonetheless.

On the primacy of punishment over restitution read this. Of course, there is reason to suspect that many people will prefer to receive restitution than see who victimized them suffer. Consider the ultimate crime, murder. It’s actually oversimplifying things and the maximum allowable punishment is greater, but the heirs of the victim, at the very least, have a right to kill the murderer. More often, the criminal and victim, through arbitration, will agree on monetary restitution. Insurance companies will often serve as intermediaries, giving a portion of the total owed immediately to the victim and taking on the task of recapturing funds from the criminal. If restitution is the course of action, consider this from Wollstein:

Retribution is, however, only the first of the three proper functions of a penal system. The other two are removal and rehabilitation. Removal is the limitation and control of the actions of an individual to insure that he pays back the damages that he has caused (or that he act according to the will of his victim). The degree of removal, like the degree of retribution, is not a constant, but a variable whose value depends upon the specific nature of the crime and of the criminal. Thus in the case of a “three time loser,” removal frOm society should be complete to insure that the malefactor pays back his debt. Conversely, in the case of a person who had just gotten into a fight which resulted in only minor injuries to his victim, the degree of removal might be zero. At one extreme there would, then, exist penitentaries such as we have today, completely separated from the rest of society, and at the other extreme there might simply be parole boards which the criminal would check with infrequently. Between these two extremes there are many other possible forms of removal. Let us now consider them in more detail, and in doing so we will see how penal institutions in general might be financed.

Where removal is complete, prisons should be established as self-supporting communities – farms, in the event that little commerce with the outside world is desirable. Today such totally removed institutions are irrationally operated on the basis of equalitarian socialism. All criminals are given the same trivial wages, regardless of their crime or their productive ability, and are provided with free room and board. The work which criminals do is often a game, of little productive value; and there is no possibility for advancement. This state of affairs is largely responsible for the failure of our prisons to rehabilitate criminals. It is imperative, therefore, that capitalism be imported into the prisons.

Prisoners should be paid market wages for thuir work, and they should be able to advance in their jobs according to their competency. Thus the more productive a prisoner was, the faster he could pay off his debt. The prisoner would in turn use his wages, after a portion was deducted pay off his debt, to buy food, clothing, shelter and entertainment. Just as in the outside world, those who did not work would not eat. Conversely, those who were highly productive would be able to buy better goods than those who were not very productive.

For those prisoners who had little or not skills, and for those who wished to increase their skills (and thereby increase their productivity and decrease their time in prison) there could be job training programs and academic courses. The cost of these educational services prisoners could also pay for out of their future wages.

Where removal need not be complete, even more possibilities exist. “Prisons” could be factories or sections of factories in cities. Prisoners could be daily bused from special dormitories to the factories during the day, and back again at night.

Under such a system of profit-making prisons, rehabilitation would be automatic. With the exception of “crimes of passion,” most persons commit crimes because they believe that theft, murder and other criminal acts are the easiest way of achieving their ends. Among other things, they lack confidence in their ability to earn the values which they desire. A penal system operated as described above would create an environment in which a prisoner could not support his life by crime and would have to work to earn his living. In this respect only would a prison be essentially different from the outside society. Moreover, the more a prisoner worked, the sooner he would be free. Such an environment is ideally suited to teaching men the value of work and to create or restore their confidence in their ability to support their own lives.

If I understand the process correctly, bail is for those awaiting trial. So, this raises the question of what measures can be taken before a criminal is convicted. There’s a certain level of force appropriate to the seriousness of a suspected crime. If someone in a blue hat recently robbed a store in the area, detaining a guy in a blue hat matching the description is justified whether it’s found later that he had an alibi or not. So, it is reasonable to hold a prisoner before trial and ask for bail to secure their appearance.

The same sort of process would apply to those already convicted, whereas it does not now. If you get 5-10 from today’s system, you do 3-5 or whatever, earn $.04/hr. picking up garbage alongside the road, even if you are a theoretical physicist, and have no chance to secure the relative freedom of parole.

When someone has been found guilty of heinous crimes like murder, nothing is owed to them. A TV certainly isn’t, not even so much as a toothbrush, blanket, or hot meal. Their juridical status is no different than a cow for slaughter. There’s obvious reasons for cooperation between the convicted and those to whom they owe obligations nonetheless.

I’m interested in the details of underwriting for bail bonds. It is probably similar to the financial ratings of bonds, as in debt securities, or ratings of financial institutions. In the free market system I envision, those with a lesser criminal history or proven ability to outpace their debt with earnings will get the most liberties. Those with only modest skills, or simply too great a debt, or who are perceived as a risk to commit further crimes, could reasonably face a meager existence in prison. The worst of the worst prisoners, those who become a liability rather than an asset might end up in something like the Panamanian prison from the TV show Prison Break. If a community of murderers can’t produce enough to justify the circle of armed guards at the gates, they will simply be written off. There’s no reason to disallow a return to the practice of public execution

The bail system is un-libertarian.

No it isn’t. It’s just as libertarian as an insurance policy.

There would be no compulsion on him to appear. If he chose not to defend himself, then the trial would proceed in absentia, which of course would mean that the defendant’s chances would be by that much diminished. Compulsion could only be used against the defendant after his final conviction. In the same way, a defendant could not be kept in jail before his conviction, unless, as in the case of police coercion, the jailer is prepared to face a kidnapping conviction if the defendant turns out to be innocent.

We’re not talking about just throwing everyone in jail on hearsay. Even in cases where the seriousness of the crime doesn’t give rise to demand the accused secure his appearance with a bond on something like his house, a court might serve an issuance that such property will be confiscated should he be convicted in absentia.

It’s problematic to look at legal proceedings as a product versus a process, as do most traditions of legal positivism and normative reductionism. A conviction is not a “final act”. That a member of the court has seen video evidence of someone who looks like the accused slash some old lady’s neck, results in a judgment to temporarily restrict the accused’s movement. It’s not a final “judgment” but it is one nonetheless.

There very well could be cases where jailers are subject to kidnapping charges, but it is certainly not the case in every instance of jail before formal adjucation. Consider the transitory nature of preliminary judgments to detain in relation to the libertarian theory of rejecting the 4th amendment to the US Constitution.

14

“So, this raises the question of what measures can be taken before a criminal is convicted. There’s a certain level of force appropriate to the seriousness of a suspected crime. If someone in a blue hat recently robbed a store in the area, detaining a guy in a blue hat matching the description is justified whether it’s found later that he had an alibi or not.”

No, not at all. It’s only justified if he is actually guilty (did the crime), otherwise they have kidnapped the innocent person and they are the criminals.

…

"In every crime, in every invasion of rights, from the most negligible breach of contract up to murder, there are always two parties (or sets of parties) involved: the victim (the plaintiff) and the alleged criminal (the defendant). The purpose of every judicial proceeding is to find, as best we can, who the criminal is or is not in any given case.

Generally, these judicial rules make for the most widely acceptable means of finding out who the criminals may be. But the libertarian has one overriding caveat on these procedures: no force may be used against non-criminals. For any physical force used against a non-criminal is an invasion of that innocent person’s rights, and is therefore itself criminal and impermissible.

Take, for example, the police practice of beating and torturing suspects – or, at least, of tapping their wires. People who object to these practices are invariably accused by conservatives of “coddling criminals.” But the whole point is that we don’t know if these are criminals or not, and until convicted, they must be presumed not to be criminals and to enjoy all the rights of the innocent: in the words of the famous phrase, “they are innocent until proven guilty.” (The only exception would be a victim exerting self-defense on the spot against an aggressor, for he knows that the criminal is invading his home.)

“Coddling criminals” then becomes, in actuality, making sure that police do not criminally invade the rights of self-ownership of presumptive innocents whom they suspect of crime. In that case, the “coddler,” and the restrainer of the police, proves to be far more of a genuine defender of property rights than is the conservative.

We may qualify this discussion in one important sense: police may use such coercive methods provided that the suspect turns out to be guilty, and provided that the police are treated as themselves criminal if the suspect is not proven guilty. For, in that case, the rule of no force against non-criminals would still apply.

Suppose, for example, that police beat and torture a suspected murderer to find information (not to wring a confession, since obviously a coerced confession could never be considered valid). If the suspect turns out to be guilty, then the police should be exonerated, for then they have only ladled out to the murderer a parcel of what he deserves in return; his rights had already been forfeited by more than that extent. But if the suspect is not convicted, then that means that the police have beaten and tortured an innocent man, and that they in turn must be put into the dock for criminal assault.

In short, in all cases, police must be treated in precisely the same way as anyone else; in a libertarian world, every man has equal liberty, equal rights under the libertarian law. There can be no special immunities, special licenses to commit crime. That means that police, in a libertarian society, must take their chances like anyone else; if they commit an act of invasion against someone, that someone had better turn out to deserve it, otherwise they are the criminals.

As a corollary, police can never be allowed to commit an invasion that is worse than, or that is more than proportionate to, the crime under investigation. Thus, the police can never be allowed to beat and torture someone charged with petty theft, since the beating is far more proportionate a violation of a man’s rights than the theft, even if the man is indeed the thief."

… - MNR (same article I quoted from earlier)

15

Which makes the bondsman a libertarian job generally speaking. He helps people post bail in effect lowering the bail set by the judge. He is similar to an accountant who will advise you how to get around taxes for a fee.

16

No, not at all. It’s only justified if he is actually guilty (did the crime)

There’s no perfect knowledge of historic events. Versus state Diktat systems, libertarian law is manifest of the actions of individuals.

It’s true that police are open to punishment themselves, but consider part of what Rothbard wrote that you didn’t highlight:

As a corollary, police can never be allowed to commit an invasion that is worse than, or that is more than proportionate to, the crime under investigation. Thus, the police can never be allowed to beat and torture someone charged with petty theft, since the beating is far more proportionate a violation of a man’s rights than the theft, even if the man is indeed the thief."

Read my post again. There are serious problems with your interpretation. Even if I grant, arguendo, the validity of the argument, you have to consider that someone (another security firm) has to act against the other. Understanding it is necessary to detain suspects, it would not serve their own interests to establish the precedent you want. I’m not talking about waterboarding suspected petty thieves. I’m talking about restricting the movement of those suspected of more serious crimes. By your interpretation, it seems that a court could do absolutely nothing until a “final verdict is reached”. Consider again what I said about process vs. product.

17

It is not a question of wether a court could do something before sentencing. The question is if the court can do something before sentencing without having to pay reparations if it turns out that the person held against his will was not guilty.

18

It is not a question of wether a court could do something before sentencing. The question is if the court can do something before sentencing without having to pay reparations if it turns out that the person held against his will was not guilty.

Like I keep saying, process not product. I can point you to references on the down and dirty philosophy regarding legal positivism and normative reductionism if you actually want to go read some books on it (not online).

There’s a further problem with practical implications than the one I already pointed out, even if I grant the validity of your theory for the sake of argument. No security firm would agree to render services without part of their legal code requiring subscribers to cooperate with investigations or agree to be detained when certain criteria for evidence is met.

19

Its a civilized profession and one that will thrive in a post-capitalist free market anarcho-capitalist world.