Bail agents bust old image: The job is really a bore

Martin Kuz

Tuesday, Feb. 16, 1999 | 11:24 a.m.

Your typical workday involves such thrill-a-minute tasks as underwriting surety bonds, following up on defaulted loans and collecting outstanding debts. Your job:

(a) Is about as exciting as paste.

(b) Requires that you practically epoxy the phone to your ear because you spend more hours on it than a Time-Life operator.

(d) All of the above.

The answer -- an unequivocal (d) -- comes courtesy of those attending the Professional Bail Agents of the United States winter conference this week at the Luxor hotel-casino. Here, no one shrinks from admitting that the fiercest action they see most days is fighting the lunch-time rush. Fact is, they sort of like it that way.

"We're nothing more than insurance salesmen," Andrew Renshaw said, no hint of inferiority in his voice. The senior vice president of H&H Bail Bonds, one of the nation's largest agencies of its kind with offices in 10 states, Renshaw summarizes his field this way: "Basically what we're doing is underwriting a performance bond guaranteeing the defendant will appear in court."

Not exactly the sort of concept that TV executives embrace. Yet if Renshaw's job description lacks prime-time ratings potential, it speaks to the purpose of the PBUS conference: Namely, to help the bail bond industry erase the image of its agents as gun-toting, law-flouting, knuckle-dragging heavies no more than a clean shirt better than their criminal clientele.

In this crowd, ponytails and tattoos are out, pinstripe suits and tassled loafers are in. Attendees carry cell phones and day planners, not .38s and stun guns. Instead of the latest personal-defense weaponry, the handful of exhibitors hawk wellness technology and computer software.

In short, like seemingly everything else in the business world, bail bonding is going clean and corporate, right down to the attire.

"In reality, we don't dress much different than accountants," Scott Hall said.

The owner of Anytime Bail Bonding Inc. in Marietta, Ga., Hall, 34, started his business in 1994 after he gave up selling -- what else -- insurance. Clad in a crisp gray suit, his hair at Sunday-school length, he likens the work of bail agents to another kind of responsible lender -- with two small distinctions.

"A bank loans money to credible people with a tremendous amount of collateral," Hall said. "We loan money to criminals with almost no collateral."

That basic equation remains unchanged for bail bond agents even as they try to boost their quotient of professionalism. Far from the common public misperception of agents operating by the seat of their well-worn pants, the job requires nothing less than absolute diligence.

Bail agents post bond money for accused criminals, allowing them to be released from jail into the agent's custody. In most states, including Nevada, the premium an agent puts up is 10 percent. The lion's share of cases in Clark County -- DUIs, domestic abuse, drug possession -- carry a bail amount of $500 to $3,000, with the agent posting the corresponding $50 to $300. That amount is typically paid to the agent by the alleged perpetrator or a family member.

The agent then must ensure that the person shows for court. In Nevada, if someone skips bail the agent has 180 days to track him down. If that time elapses, the agent must cough up the full bail amount.

The risk of financial loss explains why the bail bond business is largely a high-stress desk job. Agents work the phone, doing background checks on potential clients, calling current ones to remind them about court dates or contacting the friends and relatives of someone who may have skipped town. Throw in the mounds of forms to fill out -- everything from county audits to assorted court documents -- and the bail bond industry seems more about pushing paper than anything else.

"We're social workers," said Ronnie Long, 57, a longtime bail agent in Fort Worth, Texas. "We tie things together and solve the problem."

Most often, the solution comes peacefully. The great majority of those who miss a court date -- which occurs in one of every 15 cases, by an agent's estimate -- have forgotten about it or simply overslept. Few cases of wayward suspects degenerate into physical confrontations, past PBUS President Gerald Monks said, and the perception that fists are a bail agent's first option is "really b.s. One out of 1,000 cases is like that."

Then again, Monks wears a clip-on tie, which he figures will release from his shirt if anyone should ever try to grab him by it.

Bail agents make a point of distinguishing themselves from bounty hunters, known as "fugitive recovery agents" in the industry lexicon. Agents generally hire bounty hunters as independent contractors to track alleged criminals who deliberately skip town.

But increasingly, bail agents are going hi-tech to find suspects, using software that enables them to hunt down "skips" with as little information as a person's Social Security number or an old home address. Cleo Fugi-Trac Systems Inc. out of Texas is offering a program it dubs "the database with an attitude" at the PBUS conference. It holds the names of 314 million people in the U.S., Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico and Canada.

"They lose 'em, we find 'em," Fugi-Trac's Ed Hasley said.

The development of such software helps reduce the chance of fisticuffs because agents can better plot how they will approach a skip. That's good news to Jon Foster, co-owner of ABC Bail Bond Inc. in Las Vegas, who feels lucky to have had only a handful of dustups during his years as a bail agent.

"Most of it's just paperwork and phone calls," Foster said. "You do a lot from the office."

Which makes for good business -- if not so great box office.