Boba Fett. Jonah Hex. Stephanie Plum. Rick Deckard. What do these names have in common? Give up? All right, let’s add one: Duane “Dog” Chapman. See it now? These characters are all bounty hunters, hired to round up fugitives who skip bail (or, in Fett’s case, annoy Jabba the Hutt). What is bail? It’s an agreement by a criminal defendant to appear for trial or pay a sum of money set by the court. Once bail is set, the defendant has three choices: (1) stay in jail until trial; (2) pay the bail amount in full and go free until trial; or (3) arrange for a bond with a bail bondsman, who charges the defendant a fee in return for guaranteeing the bail payment.
Bail is a simple-sounding process that can get tricky. There are different rules in different jurisdictions, and emotions run high, making situations even dicier. Plotkin, a third-generation bondsman, explains it all as clearly and thoroughly as a Martha Stewart recipe. Fictional bounty hunters notwithstanding, the process is mostly dry, though Plotkin describes a few exciting cases, such as getting a sweet cherry Ferrari 456GT from one client as collateral. Or when he handled Michael Jackson’s $3 million bail in 2005 before the singer was found “not guilty” of his criminal charges (the quotation marks are Plotkin’s and a cheeky commentary on Jackson’s exoneration, which angered a lot of people).
Being a how-to manual, GET BAIL, LEAVE JAIL doesn’t get into social issues, such as how the bail bond system is widely considered to be discriminatory, requiring low-income defendants–many of whom are African-American–to stay in jail or scrape together potentially thousands of dollars on a moment’s notice. Or how bounty hunters, who are not law enforcement officers, are largely unregulated yet carry weapons and often have police or military training. What it does offer is step-by-step guidance on navigating the American criminal justice system (bail is illegal in all other countries except the Philippines). Readers with a loved one facing charges, or those who are simply are interested in learning about a murky area of the law from an authoritative source, need to read this book.
S.J. Plotkin’s GET BAIL, LEAVE JAIL is an authoritative, soup-to-nuts discussion of the American bail system.
~Anthony Aycock for IndieReader