Author: Krahl, David E.
Title: An Analysis of the Financial Impact of Surety Bonding on Aggregate and Average Detention Costs and Cost Savings in the State of Florida for 2008 by a Single Florida Insurance Company: A Follow-Up Study to Earlier Research
Summary: In the twenty-first century world and in light of a sub-optimally performing economy, counties and local governments are attempting to find cost-effective and financially pragmatic ways to contain costs. The edict of "doing more with less" has been the perpetual mantra of local and county government officials when seeking to provide government services without increasing the size or the costs of the bureaucratic infrastructure. This has been particularly true when it comes to the issue of jail overcrowding, and the question of how to reduce the costs of jail operations. Today's jails are filled with defendants who are awaiting trial, those who are awaiting sentencing or who are actually serving sentences, those who are awaiting transportation to state prison facilities, illegal immigrants who have been apprehended by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and those who are detained to civil commitment orders. One pragmatic and workable solution to the problem of jail overcrowding and that oftentimes is routinely ignored by government officials is the use of surety bonding as a way to effectuate the pretrial release of those defendants who are awaiting trial. To say the least, the use of surety bonding has a rich tradition in the United States. One of the distinct advantages of surety bonding is that it functions as cost-effective mechanism to provide for the pretrial release of defendants at an absolute zero-cost to taxpayers. Because the surety bonding industry operates in the private sector, surety bonding is a strategy that does not increase either the size of the government's bureaucracy or the expense of its operation. Government-funded pretrial release programs are unable to make either of these claims; nor can they substantiate the cost-efficiency of their performance through the use of empirical data. This research is a follow-up study to one conducted last year which documents the cost-savings associated with surety bonding as a pretrial release mechanism for one surety bonding company in the state of Florida. This study also discusses the implications of these findings relative to the operation of the process of pretrial release. It also calls for more extensive research to further address the problems posed by government-sponsored pretrial release programs in terms of burgeoning costs to taxpayers and increasing the size of government infrastructure.
Details: Tampa, Florida: Department of Criminology, University of Tampa, 2009. 65p.
Source: Library Resource: Accessible at Don M. Gottfredson Library of Criminal Justice.
Year: 2009
Country: United States
URL:
Shelf Number: 127260
Keywords:
BailBail BondsmenCorrectional OperationsCorrections (Florida)Costs of Criminal Justice (Florida)Jail OvercrowdingPretrial Release |
