Did your dear one got arrested for any crime? If yes, then the court will fix a bail amount for the same. You need to pay the amount of money to get released from the jail as your case is pending. And since the bail amounts are several dollars, it can get challenging to get some cash for bail, more so because no one was expecting the arrest and the subsequent bail.
What happens if you aren’t able to post the bail? If you aren’t able to post the bail amount, it’s essential to wait in the prison till the case finishes. It can get resolved via plea negotiations with the concerned prosecutor or through any verdict made by the jury or judge. In either situation, the criminal case will prove to be lengthy, and it indicates that you should be in pretrial detention for some time. To know more about it, you can check out Castle Bail Bonds.
How does bail get set?
Once you get arrested, you are likely to be in police custody. And moving out of jail means you have to pay the bail. The bail is a legal arrangement between the court and you. Once you pay this amount that the judge decides, you can move out of jail, but you must attend all the court hearings. And when the process gets completed, you get back the bail amount. And when you don’t make the appearance, the money that you pay gets forfeited. It means that the court gets to keep it. Also, the judge will issue your arrest warrant.
Since, the bail acts as a surety that ensures you will get back to the court, the amount is generally high. A costly bail amount makes sure that you will be present for all the hearings.
However, the amount you should pay to get released from jail is based on multiple factors. Just in case you get charged with any misdemeanor, the court might set a certain amount as listed on the bail schedule. The final decision gets based on many factors like:
- The criminal history
- The risk that the defendant has on the community
- The offense severity of which you got accused
- The professional and familial obligations
- The chances of you escaping before the trial
What happens when you don’t post the bail?
Often the pretrial detention gets looked upon as an injustice because it punishes legally innocent people. However, the Prison Policy Initiative states that close to 500,000 people in the United States get held in prison as they wait for the trial. According to a few reports, as many as 12,600 people in 2018 were in pretrial detention in certain parts of the United States.
It would help if you remembered that people aren’t in the custody simply because they got accused of a crime. It’s also because some of them haven’t been able to pay the bail. As mentioned before, when you don’t pay your bail, you will stay in jail until your case gets over.