I'm bothered by the idea of pre-trial detention in the first place. I'm no legal expert, but to me, it seems that the only reasons to imprison the accused before his day in court are if he's determined by a judge to be a danger to himself or to others, or if a judge determines that he's at risk of flight.

Releasing those who are deemed flight risks and trusting them to return for their court appearance would put us at risk of being unable to prosecute them. It seems reasonable to me to reduce that risk by increasing the cost that will be incurred by that person if he fails to appear by requiring him to let us hold onto something he'd prefer not to permanently lose until he appears (i.e., our system of bail). It's like someone saying, "I promise to come back when I'm supposed to," judge saying, "Your word is not enough," and that someone saying, "Okay, how about I provide some collateral? Here, take my _____. You know I'll come back for that."

So say a judge decides that someone -- accused but not tried or convicted -- is likely not to return to court if he's released before his court date. And for now, assume that the judge was able to accurately judge the likelihood, and able to accurately judge what amount of money taken from that person and held by the court is likely to reduce the risk of flight to an acceptable level. Once we allow that to happen, it seems that we have no way of restricting whether the money the court gets -- the bail -- came from the bank account of the accused, from that of a family member, or from someone else who gave or lent the money to the accused. A business opportunity arises: lending people money for use as bail. I've always thought of bail bondsmen as people who perform that service for fee, which is typically 10% of the bail amount. Cool. Don't have money to pay your bail, but can convince someone else to lend it to you? Fine. Between the two of you, someone has financial incentive for you to appear in court as ordered.

So say you are arrested, charged with whatever, and given a court date. Say a judge determines that if you're let free until that date, you are not likely to return, but that if you had $1000 on the line, you *would* be likely to return. The court gets $1000 (probably from someone acting on your behalf, since you're locked up and can't get to your bank account) and you're released. Now *someone* has $1000 of his money held in trust by the court, and if you fail to show up for your court date, someone is out $1000. The court has $1000 assurance that you'll appear. The court shouldn't care where that money came from as long as it wasn't stolen. If you arrange for someone to lend you the money with the agreement that you'll give it back after you appear in court, then if you fail to appear, that someone isn't going to get the money you owe him. So at he point, *he* has incentive to ensure that you appear in court, and *he* is at risk of not getting his money back. In order for this to be a non-charitable venture, he needs to charge you and everyone else for whom he performs this service a fee that covers the cost of him losing money when people who fail to appear fail to repay him and some profit.

Shift around who holds money at what times, and what I just described is pretty much the way I thought bail bonding worked. The court decreases the risk of flight to the court by increasing the cost of flight to the accused. For a fee, the accused can shift the cost of his potential flight from himself to a bondsman. The bondsman, in turn, will take action to reduce the likelihood of his flight -- like threatening to send a bounty hunter after him and drag him back if he does so.

But according to this radio story, that system has gone horribly wrong. In our hypothetical situation, the bondsman won't be out $1000 if you take off, he'll only be out $50, and that's only the case if he pays voluntarily or the court forces him to pay (the story said that many courts don't bother to attempt collection when bondsmen don't pay what they owe). So if he charges you 10% -- $100 -- and you show up, he makes $100. If you don't show, he makes $50. So there's really only $50 on the line, not $1000. So the court starts setting bail that reasonably should be $1000 at $10,000 instead, and then there's $500 on the line. But there's way less chance that you can pay your own bail -- which is what we wanted in the first place -- because while the judge knows you *could* pay $1000, you probably can't pay $10,000, so you're effectively forced to use a bondsman.

Winner: bondsmen and the politicians they reward for maintaining this system. Losers: you, court, and the rest of us.