There is a lot of consumer fraud, a lot of inefficiency. “What I found is that the process is pretty antiquated. “Her story prompted me to study the process of making bail – not so much the legal framework, but the nuts and bolts of how I concretely post bail,” Weber told me. Its founder, Galen Weber, a former data analyst for the Federal Reserve, was motivated to develop the platform in part by the death of Bland, whose family was geographically distant and struggled to secure the money to purchase a bail bond on her behalf. The site, Betterbail, which is still in beta, makes it possible to secure a bail bond in New York City entirely online, sometimes within a matter of minutes. In my state of Massachusetts, bond agents simply became obsolete.īut in New York, where bail bondsmen still operate, a new startup is trying to improve the system through technology, and it hopes eventually to expand its platform to other states. At least six states have outlawed commercial bail bondsmen. Of course, some argue the bail system should be done away with entirely, pointing to last year’s death of Sandra Bland in a Texas jail after failing to raise $5,000 bail. In some states, such as New York, bond agents require in-person payments, making it impossible for out-of-state relatives or friends to purchase a bond from afar.
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Bail bondsmen typically set up shop close to a courthouse or jail, where family or friends can come in and purchase a bond for some percentage of the full bail amount. The process of obtaining a bail bond remains very much a brick-and-mortar one.
If there is a corner of the legal world where technology has yet to reach, it is the bail bond system.