News
Updates from the National Association of Bail Agents
California Is About to Give Prosecutors a Reason to Let Defendants Walk Free — And Bill the Bail Agent for It
A little-noticed provision in California SB 562 would force bail agents to refund most of their premium if a prosecutor misses a 21-day filing deadline — creating a financial incentive for ideologically aligned DAs to run out the clock, an unconstitutional unfunded mandate on the courts, and a mandatory refund trigger tailor-made for the most common pattern in domestic violence cases.
The Fix Is In: How a California Court Ruling Is Being Used to Dismantle the Bail System — And What Utah's Experience Tells Us About What Comes Next
A unanimous California Supreme Court ruling in In re Kowalczyk narrows when bail can be denied and requires ability-to-pay assessments — reopening a pipeline into government-supervised pretrial release that Utah's own court records show operating with no financial accountability when defendants fail to appear.