Las Vegas Sun

March 29, 2024

CRIMINAL JUSTICE:

Want to post bail? Wait until morning

Court ends round-the-clock bail services, which might aggravate overcrowding at county slammer

bail1

Leila Navidi

Bail agent Jody Sandoval awaits customers last week at Black Jack Bail Bonds in downtown Las Vegas. Owners of bail bonds companies are not pleased with the Las Vegas Justice Court’s elimination of the graveyard hours for bail services.

Bail Bonds

Bail agent Jody Sandoval talks on the phone during the swing shift at Black Jack Bail Bonds in downtown Las Vegas Wednesday, March 3, 2010. Launch slideshow »

Beyond the Sun

The Clark County jail is notoriously slow when it comes to bail, and a recent change could make it even slower, further clogging the criminal justice system.

Las Vegas Justice Court this week stopped allowing people to post bail between midnight and 8 a.m. and is no longer letting out people eligible for release without bail between midnight and 4 a.m. The reason: The court’s pretrial services division, which processes bail requests, has been under a hiring freeze since October that has thinned its ranks.

“We’re no longer able to spread everything out over 24 hours,” Chief Judge Ann Zimmerman said.

Henderson and North Las Vegas justice courts have round-the-clock bail services. So do courts in Salt Lake City, Phoenix, San Diego and Washoe County.

Zimmerman and other legal experts say the Las Vegas court is not violating anyone’s rights by closing the bail windows overnight. “Certainly you have a right to bail, but there’s nothing that said you have a right to bail this minute,” Zimmerman said.

Allen Lichtenstein, general counsel for American Civil Liberties Union of Nevada, said the possible results are an issue, however. If people cannot post bail overnight, they will spend more time in jail, and that will make overcrowding at the county jail even worse, Lichtenstein predicts.

“You already have 40 people in a holding cell, some of them sleeping on the floor,” he said. “It looks like something out of the Third World.”

Forcing someone to endure such conditions “for a long period of time does raise some serious constitutional concerns,” he added.

Instead of making moves that further delay the release of people who can or have posted bail, the Clark County judicial system should be working to clear out jail beds quicker, he said.

He said that if the local criminal justice system were interested in saving money, it would do more to make sure that individuals who make bail are released in a timely fashion, something he said would reduce the overcrowding — and reduce costs to taxpayers for housing, guarding, feeding and providing medical care for inmates.

“The goal should be that people who are not a danger to the community or are not a flight risk should be processed so as not to overload the system,” he said.

Lichtenstein said that for years he has been asking why it takes so long for people to be released after posting bail. “I never get a clear answer,” he said.

Zimmerman and a Metro Police spokesman acknowledge it can take up to a full day for a person to be released from jail after bail is posted. They argue it’s one reason why the effect of closing bail windows at night will be negligible.

Although the Las Vegas Justice Court’s pretrial services handles 1,400 to 1,500 bail applications a month, only 80 to 160 of those had been filed from midnight to 8 a.m., court spokesman Michael Sommermeyer said.

But he also acknowledges that the system is saving only about $55,500 annually with the change.

The elimination of the graveyard hours has met a chilly reception from owners of bail bonds companies, who were given 30 days notice of the change but were not asked for their input.

Black Jack Bail Bonds owner Michial Taylor, president of the industry advocacy group Surety Bail Agents of Nevada, said that at a minimum pretrial services can expect to be bombarded by higher volumes of bail paperwork each morning.

Click to enlarge photo

Tracy Giancola, an intake specialist with Las Vegas Justice Court, processes a bail transaction last week at the Clark County Detention Center. The court no longer allows inmates and bail bonds companies to post bail between midnight and 8 a.m.

“It’s going to create a huge amount of backlog,” Taylor predicted.

Sommermeyer said the change involved moving staff to the day shift.

Taylor said he intends to solicit input from members of the group “as to what kind of problems they are experiencing” as a result of the change.

Paul Caruso, owner of Express Bail Bonds and six similar companies, fears his industry will lay off night-shift employees.

“It’s also another eight hours where someone sits in jail and can’t do anything about his bail situation,” Caruso adds.

Taylor is convinced that the change will simply add to the “amazingly insane amount of time it takes to get released from Clark County Detention.”

“I believe it will add to the overcrowding of that jail,” he said.

Metro Police acknowledge that overcrowding is a problem. But Officer Bill Cassell, a Metro spokesman, said the reason jail personnel figure the changes won’t affect overcrowding is there are so many reasons why it takes up to 24 hours for an individual to be released once bail is posted.

“Releasing someone from jail is not as simple as opening the door,” he said. “One of the biggest factors has to do with time of day and day of the week.”

If, for instance, someone has met bail requirements between noon and 6 p.m. on weekdays, they often have to wait in line behind hundreds of others who have also posted bail, Cassell said. There can be long lines simply to get one’s property returned before release. These lines can drag into the night, he said.

The jail also has to verify whether the correct person is being released. Cassell said detainees often attempt to pass themselves off as others.

Asked whether there is anything Metro could do to reduce the waiting time after bail is posted, Cassell said: “Not without cutting corners that we don’t want to cut.”

Zimmerman said the court will check back with the detention center in a month or so to ascertain whether the change is contributing to overcrowding.

“If it is problematic, we’ll have to figure out what to do next,” she said.

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