Cradling his office phone between his head and left shoulder, Raul "Katt" Brewster grabs his cell mid-ring and answers, "Bail bonds."
His fluorescent orange office walls hit like smelling salt. They keep him alert, Brewster says.
"Twenty thousand?" asks Brewster, the manager of the Wilmington office of Powell Bail Bonding. "Can you come up with a G? ... Can you come up with a thousand?"
In the few minutes between phone calls, Brewster talks about his trade and its "adversary:" pretrial release.
Sitting eight miles away in an office at the New Hanover County courthouse, Ray Murphy disagrees.
The pretrial release contractor says, "The public is going to win when pretrial and bonding cooperate."
Bail bonding companies and pretrial release programs get people out of jail as they wait for their court date. Both say they reduce prison populations.
But bail bonding companies say pretrial costs taxpayers money that should be spent elsewhere, while pretrial advocates say the program rehabilitates offenders and monitors them as they pay fines and child support.
For some bail companies, the feud has become political. Brewster said bail bond companies lobby state legislatures to limit pretrial release programs and represent their interests on other issues.
Locally, the Lower Cape Fear Bail Bonding Association represents bail agents, while the North Carolina Bail Agents Association is its statewide counterpart. Also, the N.C. Bail Agents Association Political Action Committee raises money and donates it to General Assembly campaigns and committees.
Since 2004, local bail bond agents have donated more than $11,000 to the PAC, which the committee distributed to Columbus County Democratic Sen. R.C. Soles Jr.'s campaign, the Republican House Majority Fund, the North Carolina Republican Senate Committee, the North Carolina House Democratic Committee and the Committee to Elect Republican Women, among other candidates and committees.
Bail bond companies and pretrial release advocates use many arguments about their cost and effectiveness, said John Roman, a senior research associate at the Urban Institute's Justice Policy Center. And as local budgets shrink, the tension could rise, Roman said.
"I'm not sure they get along fine anywhere," Roman said. "To some extent, it's a zero-sum game."
Brewster said government pays for pretrial release programs, while bail bonding doesn't take public funds and supports the state's public schools.
Forfeited bonds go to local school budgets as required by state law. In the 2008 fiscal year, more than $450,000 was given to New Hanover County and more than $10 million to the state through forfeitures.
Brewster said the state loses potential money by releasing defendants without bond and spends money to monitor them while on pretrial release. Not all pretrial release participants are required to pay a bond.
In the 2009 fiscal year, pretrial release cost the county $528,636 for staff salary, benefits and operating expenses. The figure also includes a $360,000 contract awarded to Tarheel Monitoring to run the program's electronic monitoring.
But the program saved $7.8 million in jail costs that year, according to the Administrative Office of the Courts.
Murphy said the pretrial program saves money by getting qualified defendants out of jail quickly, relieving facility costs for food, clothing, medicine and other expenses.
Alice Hovis, director of the program, said pretrial release employees interview inmates each morning before their first court appearance by video. If they find potential participants, they recommend them to a judge, who decides whether they qualify. If the judge allows the defendant into the program, he or she is released that day.
"It's not just us finding ways to get people out of jail," Murphy said. "The pretrial program runs leaner, slicker, faster than the bonding program."
Pretrial release advocates argue they rehabilitate defendants while bail bond companies focus on getting them to court.
Fifty-three defendants on pretrial release received substance abuse or mental health counseling during the 2009 fiscal year. Another 75 participants had a daily curfew, 15 were required to attend school, 219 were under house arrest with electronic monitoring and 63 couldn't drink alcohol or take illegal drugs.
"The main difference is the case management aspect," Murphy said. "Pretrial allows them to continue those positive things."
The program also focuses on defendants who were locked up because they haven't paid child support. Murphy said pretrial release lets them keep working instead of sitting in jail.
In fiscal year 2009, pretrial release participants paid more than $200,000 in owed child support.
Roman, of the Urban Institute, said bail bonding companies chase fugitives and bring them to court without taxpayer help.
"We relieve the tax load on the state," Brewster said, adding pretrial release increases the tax load. "The state has to house these inmates; they've got to clothe them."
Pretrial release also gets defendants to court, Hovis said, but they focus on rehabilitation and fine payments as well.
"If they have gotten treatment, they are less likely of getting more criminal charges," Hovis said.
Return rates for pretrial release and bail bonding differ by two percentage points as reported by Brewster and the Administrative Office of the Courts.
Roman said rehabilitation and job training provided by pretrial programs help control long-term jail costs and crime. Treatment providers and researchers know a lot about getting people onto a path that bypasses jail, he said, whether it's counseling, job training or other services.
"To not do that gets more and more indefensible as we get better and better at treating all the reasons people commit crime." Roman said. "In the short term, local government doesn't have to write a check. But in the long term, it perpetuates a cycle of crime and more crime."
Originally published at the Star News Online
