Don't Bail When Criminal Suspects Held on Bond
Loyal reader Scott sent an email recently to ask Mose's opinion on bail vs. bond usage.
“My local newspaper [in New Hampshire] insists on saying people are held on bail (‘Man accused of smashing mall windows held on $10g bail’ was a recent headline) versus being held ‘in lieu of bail,’ ” Scott wrote. “I've always understood that people were released on bail, not held on it.”
It's a thin line that separates bail and bond.
The terms are inextricably linked through people who make their living as bail bondsmen: people who take the responsibility (for a fee) for a criminal defendant's obligation to show up in court.
Webster's New World College Dictionary even says one legal definition of bond is “an amount paid as surety or bail.” But you know how dictionaries are, always abandoning tradition for popular convention.
Courts often establish a “bond schedule” for the local sheriff to follow whenever police take a suspect to jail.
Instead of calling the judge for a bond amount as each suspect is hauled in, the sheriff follows the list sent over by the court. For example, $5,000 for business burglary, $15,000 for house burglary, $25,000 for robbery, etc., the amount of bond increasing with the severity and number of the crimes involved.
That bond is, effectively, an insurance policy (surety) that the defendant will appear in court to answer the charge(s). In fact, bondsmen usually buy such policies to cover their liabilities.
The Associated Press Stylebook explains the process this way:
Bail is money or property that will be forfeited to the court if an accused individual fails to appear for trial.
The AP guide goes on to explain that the bail may be cash or collateral (usually real estate) that covers the full amount of the bond established by the court.
Some states allow a bail bondsmen to guarantee the full amount, for which the defendant pays the bondsman a percentage of the total bond, usually 10 percent.
Other states, like Illinois, cut out the middleman and serve as the bondsman themselves, allowing a defendant to go free after posting the 10 percent, which the state keeps.
“It is correct in all cases to say that an accused posted bail or posted a bail bond (the money held by the court is a form of bond),” the AP Stylebook says. “When a distinction is desired, say that the individual posted his own bail, that bail was posted by a friend or relative, or that bail was obtained through a bondsman.”
Such usage, then, is mostly discretionary by publication.
Local stylebooks that Mose has written advise writers and editors thusly:
bail, bond – A judge sets bond, and occasionally raises, lowers or revokes it. A defendant posts bail, even if it’s only the 10 percent he won’t get back regardless.
So, Scott, Mose agrees that a defendant is not “held on bail,” but may be held on a court-set bond amount or “in lieu of [posting] bail.”
Court adjourned.
