Bail bondsmen are on pace to write nearly 21 percent fewer bonds this year than in 2012 as criminal offenders have been released or turned away from crowded county jails.
The decrease has hurt more than the bail business; it has cut into funding for local and state agencies that collect a fee on each bond.
The state imposes an $80 fee on each bond. Four state agencies divide the majority of the money: the Bail Bonds Licensing Board; Arkansas Sheriffs' Association; Arkansas Public Defender Commission; and Arkansas Commission on Child Abuse, Rape and Domestic Violence.
Additionally, a percentage goes to the Arkansas Counties Alcohol, Drug Abuse and Crime Prevention Program; the local law enforcement agency that accepts the bond; and the company that writes the bond. Bond companies receive a cut as a processing expense.
Bail Bonds Licensing Board Chairman Curt Clark linked the decline in bail bonds and bail bond fees to jail crowding.
Jails have controlled inmate populations for decades by releasing low-level offenders -- bond-free -- on citations ordering them to attend their court date. But the long-standing practice has increased in recent years as jails have held more state offenders awaiting a prison bed.
The Arkansas prison population swelled by an unprecedented 17.7 percent in 2013 after the implementation of harsher penalties for parole violators, according to the state Board of Corrections. The prison system is looking at options to house more state inmates, but for the time being, the jails are left picking up the slack.
Last year, bondsmen wrote 6,273 fewer bonds than the 68,028 than in 2012, a 9.22 percent drop, according to data from the Arkansas Professional Bail Bonds Licensing Board.
Even fewer bonds have been written this year. Through the third quarter of 2014, bondsmen had written 5,090 fewer bonds than the 48,391 written in the same period last year, a 10.51 percent drop.
Compared to the first three quarters of 2012, during which 52,273 bonds were written, it's a 17.16 percent decrease.
In 2013, the decrease in bail bonds left state agencies $501,840 shy of additional funding.
Bail bond fees make up 48 percent of the Commission on Child Abuse, Rape and Domestic Violence's Domestic Peace Fund, which is used to fund 32 shelters across the state. The rest of the funding comes from marriage license fees.
The shelters, each of which operates on $18,750 annual grants from the commission, provide basic resources including food and transportation to victims of domestic violence.
They also provide transitional housing and job services.
The shelters are facing major budget cuts in the next fiscal year because of decreased funds from bail bond fees, according to the commission's grants manager, Candy Garland.
"We're depending now on the marriage license money to come up with enough revenue through the remainder of the [fiscal] year to make up with the difference in what we would lose with this shortfall in bail bond funding. So we're depending on enough people getting married, and that's almost impossible," he said.
The commission has received an average of $354,024 per year from marriage license fees over the past three years. Garland said the commission is hoping for -- but not expecting -- about $21,000 in additional marriage fees by the end of fiscal 2015.
Max Snowden, the commission's executive director, said the shelters independently seek federal grants and donations to increase funds, but the few grants available only offer small amounts of "general improvement" money.
He said the process of obtaining the grants is "god awful" because it forces shelters to compete against each other.
"Most of these programs operate so close to the edge that if they lose $5,000, they'll have to change something," he said. "They just don't have the wherewithal at the local level to fill a $5,000 hole in their budget."
Preliminary data on the number of bonds written in the fourth quarter of 2014 was unavailable, but the Bail Bonds Licensing Board expects figures to continue falling into the New Year.
According to data analyzed by the Arkansas-Democrat Gazette, the number of bonds written in the fourth quarter has decreased an average of 11.09 percent from the third quarter over the past five years. That puts bondsmen on pace to write 7,960 fewer bonds this year than in 2013.
It's a nearly 21 percent drop compared to 2012.
Bail bond fees collected by the state Public Defenders Commission have slid each year since 2008 as other state agencies began receiving a cut of the funds. But the group had its greatest decrease in six years during the 2014 fiscal year, which the commission's executive director, Gregg Parrish, also attributed to jail crowding.
As more offenders were released from crowded jails without bond, the commission's cut of the bond fee decreased 9.56 percent to $1,213,640 the past fiscal year. Bail funds amounted to slightly more than 5 percent of the agency's $23.7 million budget. Other money comes from the Department of Human Services, attorney fees and Administration of Justice funds.
The decrease in bail bond fees amounted to $128,338 that Parrish said the commission would've used to bring in expert witnesses and to hire investigators and mitigation specialists. The commission also uses bail funds to appoint outside attorneys when public defenders have a conflict of interest in a case.
"In the field of appointed attorneys, there's very little I can do but appoint them," Parrish said. "But when those requests for experts come in, I have to give priority where priority is due and I have to know that if we're going to be [financially] short down the road, maybe I can't hire that expert right now for that case where I normally would."
While bail funds have declined, the number of cases handled by the commission has increased. Between 2006 and 2012, criminal cases in the state jumped 62 percent from 155,846 to 253,300, according to the Arkansas Crime Information Center. The Public Defender Commission estimates that it handles between 90 and 95 percent of those cases.
To deal with the caseload, the commission asked for 46 additional attorneys in its budget request for the next fiscal year. The state approved three.
The decrease in bail funds comes as the commission prepares for a projected $2.4 million cut to its Administration of Justice funds the next fiscal year, Parrish said.
"Any dollar we get is vital and any position we get is vital because we're so over-worked right now and under-staffed," he said.
It was unclear how much bail money was lost when the Pulaski County jail -- the largest in the state -- "closed" because of crowding this year. On three occasions totaling 105 days, the jail refused to accept non-violent and property crime offenders because it was holding more than the maximum of 1,210 inmates.
Low-dollar bonds for such offenders considerably outnumber high-dollar, high-risk bonds for more serious offenders, making them a more reliable source of funds from the fee attached.
Sheriff's office spokesman Lt. Carl Minden said that even when the jail isn't "closed," it routinely releases low-level offenders, bond-free, as a method to control the inmate population. The jail doesn't track offenders released under those circumstances, but Minden said the practice has increased in recent years.
Bondsmen have noticed.
As a 24-hour bondsman, Jim McCracken is used to receiving phone calls -- his ringtone is "Help!" by The Beatles -- at odd hours of the night. He's gotten a lot more sleep recently.
McCracken works full time at City Bail Bond in Little Rock. But lately, he's been explaining to clients that he's not needed.
"A lot of times we get people call from the road and be like, 'Hey, I just got pulled over by the cops. I've got some weed on me and a little bit of meth.' And I'd be like, 'Well, you're not going to need me. They're going to let you go,'" he said.
Instead of being held until their court date, certain criminal suspects are fingerprinted, entered into a state database and released from jail with an agreement to appear before a judge.
"People would call us from the jail saying they got arrested, and I would know that they'd be released before I'd even get to the jail," McCracken said. "Often we'd get down there and they'd be walking out. I mean they're literally walking out as you go to meet their people in the lobby."
Echoing the public sentiments of some Little Rock District Court judges earlier this year, McCracken and Clark, the Bail Bonds Licensing Board chairman, said the criminal justice system in the state has become a process of catch and release. It's a process that bondsmen are supposed to be in the middle of, they said.
Clark said that as the bondsmen's roles have diminished because of jail crowding, many of the state's 48 licensed bail bond companies have seen business shrivel. And as the bond companies go, so do certain state agencies that depend on money from bail fees, he said.
The only ones who benefit, they said, are suspected criminals.
"It just baffles me that we can't come to a conclusion to fix this problem," Clark said.
Metro on 12/29/2014