BAIL INDUSTRY NEEDS REGULATION BADLY

On the chilly afternoon of Jan. 16, 2010, police in West Haven, Conn., responded to a 911 call from a 6-year-old boy. “Daddy hit mommy,” the caller said, referring to Selami Ozdemir, the owner of a local pizzeria. Around 5:30 p.m., Ozdemir, who had been arrested on domestic violence charges a few months prior, was brought in to the West Haven Police Department and booked. His bond was set at $25,000.

Just 90 minutes later, Ozdemir posted bond and was released from custody. By 3:30 the next morning, Ozdemir was driving back home, drunk, with a Glock 9mm handgun by his side. Just before 4 a.m., the 911 dispatch center received another call from Ozdemir’s house, but dispatchers could only hear muffled crying and loud banging. By the time police officers gained entry, Ozdemir had killed his wife and shot himself in the head.

The murder-suicide sent shockwaves through the state, raising questions about how authorities had allowed Ozdemir to commit such a heinous act. Much of the debate centered on how Ozdemir had been able to post bond so quickly. The bail bondsman who posted his bond allegedly didn’t receive any money up front or set up any kind of payment plan, according to a report released after a five-month investigation by the state district attorney’s office. “Under normal circumstances, the defendant would have had to raise $2,500 to pay the bondsman prior to his release or provide $25,000 cash himself to the police,” the report said. “His ability to immediately be released prevented any cooling off period and allowed him to immediately leave the police department and obtain the handgun used in this homicide.”

The idea that the bail bonds system might be broken wasn’t news to former Connecticut Rep. Michael Lawlor. For more than a decade, Lawlor worked as a fierce advocate for bail reform, attacking issues of overcrowding, racial disparities and a general lack of oversight of the industry. (Lawlor left the Legislature this January to serve as undersecretary for criminal justice policy and planning for incoming Gov. Dannel Malloy.) The number of bail bondsmen in Connecticut has exploded in recent decades, from a few dozen in the early 1990s to more than 400 surety bail bondsmen today. The newer agents have been known to take extreme measures to undercut the competition, often charging clients far less than the standard 10 percent bail -- sometimes as low as 2 or 3 percent. It’s illegal and very hard to prove, because the discounted prices are paid in cash. In a 2003 study, the state’s Legislative Program Review and Investigations Committee called Connecticut’s bail industry “dangerously unregulated,” with pervasive undercutting, fraudulent bond posting and other illegal practices.

For years, Lawlor pushed numerous bills to regulate the bail bond business. But, he says, his efforts were no match for the bail industry lobbyists. “These bills dealt with setting up a system for overseeing the industry, getting them to play by the rules they were supposed to play by,” he says. “They got derailed each and every year.”

The issues in Connecticut are also playing out in states nationwide. Of the more than 767,600 inmates in jails across the U.S., 60 percent are unconvicted offenders awaiting court action on a current charge, according to Bureau of Justice Statistics data from 2009. Defendants typically don’t have to wait in jail if they can pay bail agents 10 percent of the bail amount and pledge to show up in court. As the bail bond industry has grown, the agents have become more aggressive.