Bail Bonds and PreTrial Release Violations

Recently we received a call for a bail bond on an individual who had been taken into custody for violating the terms of his PreTrial Release.  This type of bail bond is not uncommon; it seems to have become pretty easy to commit a pretrial release violation in most of the Denver Metro counties.  This particular individual was placed under arrest in Arapahoe County and was housed at the detention center in Centennial.

What made this call interesting was the information provided by this individual's family.  It seems this person had been on pretrial release supervision for several months; and in that time had violated the terms of his release numerous times.  In fact, when he was taken into custody, his pretrial case worker stated that there was not a solid week where this defendant had been in compliance in the entire time he was on pretrial release supervision.

At his first court appearance since being taken into custody, this defendant's bail bond was set at $15,000.00 and he had a follow-up hearing scheduled for the next day.  At his follow-up hearing the following day, the defendant told the court that he simply could not comply with the terms set forth by pretrial release and that he couldn't afford to post the $15k bail bond.  So what did the court do?  The court reduced the defendant's bail bond amount to $5000.00 and released him from having pretrial release supervision.

So, here you have a Defendant; which the court initially assessed required pretrial supervision(to protect whom?), with numerous violations and who admits to not being able to comply, suddenly ordered released from pretrial supervision and given a reduced bond amount.  WTF, Over?  

Now the kicker: What were his pretrial release violations, you might ask?  Failure to Pay his PreTrial Release Supervision costs.

This Defendant; by order of the court, was deemed such a "threat" that he needed to be under strict pretrial release supervision.  Yet; months later, when he stated that he couldn't afford the fees, the court basically said: Oh, Ok, well if there's no financial benefit to us then you don't need to be under supervision.

What changed in this individual's life that suddenly made him less of a "threat" in the eyes of the court?  His employment status.  He'd lost his job.  According to his family; he'd lost his job due to having to leave work several times a week to do random UA's and BA's for pretrial release.  So now, that the damage was done and this defendant was no longer able to contribute to the county coffers, his threat status diminished significantly.  Shocker.  

Pretrial Release/PreTrial Sentencing - who's the REAL threat here?


Bond Squad Bail Bonds
http://www.bondsquadbailbonds.com
720-733-8844