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Private bail industry says it could help Philadelphia’s ailing system

Despite "stereotypes" of shady bail bondsmen and unshaven bounty hunters on TV, executives in the private bail industry said Monday that they could put an end to Philadelphia's fugitive crisis.

Despite "stereotypes" of shady bail bondsmen and unshaven bounty hunters on TV, executives in the private bail industry said Monday that they could put an end to Philadelphia's fugitive crisis.

They said professional bail agents would outperform Philadelphia's government-run bail system, which has permitted tens of thousands of criminal defendants to skip court without consequence and amass uncollected bail of $1 billion by the court system's own calculation.

But at a hearing before a state Senate committee, proponents of commercial bail ran into a wall of resistance from top players in the criminal justice system, including the District Attorney's Office, the Defender Association, and a president judge, who disputed whether Philadelphia even faced an unusual problem with defendants' skipping court.

Brian J. Frank, president of a leading national bail insurer, said private firms kept in close touch with defendants and their families to make sure that the accused showed up for trial, even equipping some with electronic monitors.

Frank said the industry did this not out of altruism, but because the firms are on the hook when defendants run.

"We could not have thousands of fugitives or else we would be broke," said Frank, of Lexington National Insurance Corp. of Baltimore.

Pamela Pryor Dembe, president judge of Common Pleas Court, and other witnesses were unmoved. She said private bail businesses in Philadelphia had a history of "corruption and physical abuse."

The city abolished commercial bail in the early 1970s after ugly episodes of criminality in the industry, including shakedowns of gay defendants. It chose to operate bail itself.

Dembe said she was no enthusiast of restoring private bail to a major local role. She was echoed in this by Jodi L. Lobel, a top prosecutor in the District Attorney's Office, and Stuart H. Schuman, a top official of the Defender Association, which represents defendants too poor to hire a lawyer.

Under the Philadelphia bail system, defendants initially deposit 10 percent of their total bail and sign an IOU agreeing that they will owe the remaining 90 percent if they fail to show up for court.

Court officials have acknowledged that for decades, no one made any effort to collect that 90 percent when people ducked court.

As a result, according to top court officials, defendants who have skipped court owe the city $1 billion in forfeited bail. At last count, the officials say, 47,000 people were wanted on bench warrants for failing to show up for trial.

Label and other witnesses called those figures predictable outcomes of the system's flaws.

"The reality is that criminals are incentivized to skip court because there are no consequences when they do so," she said.

State Sen. Stewart J. Greenleaf, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, called Monday's hearing, held at the Philadelphia Bar Association offices in Center City, to explore issues raised in an Inquirer series that portrayed a Philadelphia criminal justice system in crisis.

A Republican who represents parts of Bucks and Montgomery Counties, Greenleaf persuaded his colleagues to create an advisory panel to study Philadelphia's court system and recommend changes. Monday's hearing was the third conducted by the committee.

The Inquirer series, published in December, reported that Philadelphia courts had some of the nation's lowest conviction rates, pervasive witness intimidation, and a bail program riddled with problems.

Citing comparative figures from the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics, the paper reported that among large urban counties, Philadelphia was tied with Essex County, N.J. - home of Newark - for the worst long-term fugitive rate.

The federal study found that that in both counties, 11 percent of felony defendants skipped court ahead of trial and stayed on the run a year or more.

The series also highlighted the 47,000 fugitives and the $1 billion bail debt.

In her testimony Monday, Dembe minimized each of these findings.

She rejected the federal study, saying she believed the researchers made methodological errors.

As for the fugitive count, she said prosecutors intended to drop thousands of those cases as being too old or too minor to pursue.

She called the $1 billion in overdue bail "mythical at best." Though Mayor Nutter and Dembe recently announced a campaign to go after the money, she predicted Monday that 98 percent would go uncollected. Some of the debts date back decades, and many defendants are too poor to pay, she said.

Schuman, of the Defender Association, joined Dembe in warning about granting too great a role to commercial bail.

"When you try to privatize what is a public function, the profit motive often clashes with fairness," he said.

Lobel urged the court to begin examining defendants' finances before imposing bail.

"If we know the person can never pay the forfeited amount of bail, that person should never be permitted to [post] bail in the first place," she said.

Frank, the private bail executive, testified that the Philadelphia bail system needed "comprehensive reform."

"The evidence demonstrates - and Philadelphia's experience confirms - that 10 percent deposit bail is neither effective nor efficient," he said.

Nicholas J. Wachinski, a lawyer from Media who has represented bail companies, testified that private bail firms outperformed government-run bail systems. He cited several studies, including a 2007 federal analysis that found private bail to have a markedly better record in getting defendants into court.

"Defendants are only going to appear for court if the money bail we levy against them is truly the number that we set," he said. "If they feel there is no threat - that we won't seek justice - they're not going to come to court."