December 2nd 2018 Newsletter
Not a lot going on in politics in the state right now so we are going to cover the criminal justice system in the next few newsletters till things heat up politically. That is a big part of our state expenses and it impacts nearly everyone through increased crime or taxes.
Bond versus Pre Trial Release Costs
One of the arguments against professional bond is that people can't afford the bond money. The reality is that the family and friends of the accused criminal won't pay the bond fees or co sign on an appearance bond because they know the criminal better than anyone. But the liberals tell us that it is wrong to have people sit in jail because “they can't afford bond”. The liberal fix is PTR, Pre Trial Release, where the criminal pays monthly monitoring fees and checks in every day and appears two times a week in exchange for getting out of jail free.
In the example below one Jeremy Stephen Brown was busted with a DUI, driving on a suspended license, and four other related charges. Brown earns his felony charges and a $5000.00 bond is set around March 21rst 2017. That would cost someone $500.00 along with a co signer to secure the $5000.00 bond. But if he paid all he had to do was show up for the court hearings and his expense was over. But for whatever reason Brown decides not to pay for a bond.
Three days later he gets out on PTR, Pre Trial Release. As part of the conditions he agrees to pay the weekly PTR charges that start around $40.00 per week, check in every day before 9 am by phone, show up on Tuesday to check in with the supervisor, show up again on Fridays, and perform 20 hours per week community service. Going to be hard to hold down a job when you have to be at the courthouse or PTR office twice a week.
Four months later Brown had been kicked out of the PTR program for failing to comply and he owes a whopping $790.00 to the PTR program. Now we don't know why he was failed out of the program, might have not been checking in, but more likely he wasn't paying the weekly fees. We can guess that he was paying around $200 per month assuming he hadn't paid a dime to the PTR program, usually a “non profit”. The business that was in charge of Brown was Cleveland County Pretrial Services, which is a private for profit business. There website claims that the program costs $40.00 per week but they have numerous classes you have to attend that cost as much as $265.00 after filing fees and weekly fees.
And now the Oklahoma court system is going to collect that $790.00 from Brown by threatening him with prison and a revoked sentence if he refuses to pay.
In all Brown racked up $4621.00 in fines and fees with the court plus this $790.00 in fees to the PTR program. In the year and a half since his arrest he has been arrested again down in Texas and is currently paying $50.00 per month toward his debt. So assuming that he stays out of further trouble and isn't required to pay monthly monitoring fees, he will pay off his debt for fines, fees, and PTR costs in nine years.
No one is going to accuse STP of being soft on criminals but we have to question if these private companies and “non profits” are doing anything other than keeping criminals in the system for years on end. They are feeding the court system with a vast source of revenue that is largely uncollected but some of it is and as these criminals age out of their propensity to commit crimes a lot of this money will be paid into the courts in addition to the tax money they get that runs the system. After a decade or so the courts might well have a massive revenue stream coming in as they can simply revoke someone' sentence or have them jailed for non payment. I know the bondsmen can't have people arrested for not paying and neither can the attorneys, just the “non profits” and businesses that run the PTR programs.
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