Fear of repeat offenses keeps bail higher for drug charges

[Lucinda F. Boyd]

Fear of repeat offenses keeps bail higher for drug charges
by Brian Anderson
[e-mail] Anniston Star
Mar 23, 2012

Bail bond agent Jason Chandler says 34 of the 41 people he has bonded out of jail in the last three weeks have been accused of drug offenses.  Jason Chandler said in his line of work, it doesn’t pay to be judgmental.

As a bail bond agent with A Bad Boy Bonds on 11th Street in Anniston, Chandler does business every day with people charged with committing crimes.

“I’m not an opinionated person,” Chandler said. “You can’t be if you want to make money.”

In his five years working in Anniston, Chandler said he’s seen it all, from a college kid arrested for public intoxication to first-degree murderers. If you don’t get over the intimidation factor, Chandler said, the business isn’t for you.

But there is still one thing that makes Chandler nervous: Methamphetamine addicts.

“That’s the only thing that scares me,” Chandler said. “You just look in their eyes and you can tell they’re not right.”

Drug offenders don’t just make bail bondsmen uneasy, they make law enforcement agencies and court officials wary, too. Alabama is just one of many states in which their respective Supreme Courts have set their recommended maximum bail higher for drug offenders than any other type of crime — up to $150,000 for drug manufacturing. A Class A felony, in comparison, has maximum bail set at $60,000, and a non-capital murder at $75,000.

“The reasoning behind it is not so that it’s much higher than other crimes,” said Calhoun County District Judge Mannon Bankson, who hears pretrial felony cases in the county and sets bond for defendants. “It’s just trying to get them off the streets.”

Bankson said the Alabama Supreme Court’s reasoning has to do with a whole list of factors, including the number of repeat offenders common in drug trafficking and the likelihood the crimes will continue when they get released.

It’s something law enforcement sees all the time, according to Calhoun County Sheriff Larry Amerson.

“They get out on credit and they’re back out in hours,” Amerson said. “They go back to doing what they’re doing, and they get arrested again.”

But even more important than keeping drug offenders off the street, Amerson said, is keeping the offenders away from the cause of the problem.

“With this addiction, the only hope these people have is to separate them from the drug,” Amerson said. “I tell you literally every day I have some conversation with a family member who’s destroying themselves because of drugs.”

And it’s a problem that’s on the rise according to Amerson, who said as many as 90 percent of the inmates who go through Calhoun County jail are there for problems related to drugs.

“That’s possession, sale, theft to get drugs, writing bad checks, burglary,” Amerson said. “At the root of all that is a drug problem.”

They’re numbers backed up by the bail bondsmen who deal with the offenders on a daily basis. Chandler said in the last three weeks he dealt with 34 drug offenders out of the 41 people he bonded out of jail.

“It’s taking over,” Chandler said. “It’s a more serious offense than murder, because you’re killing more than one person.”

Steve Williamson, the owner of Williamson Bonding on 11th Street, just a few doors up from A Bad Boy Bonds, said just about everything he deals with is in some way drug related.

“Most crime in general is somewhat drug related,” Williamson said. “Home invasions, stuff like that. Even copper thefts, a lot of that is through the drug community.”

In other words, Williamson said, it makes sense bail is set high for drug manufacturers. If most crimes can be traced back to the drug, then they can be traced back to the trafficking and manufacturing problems.

And while Chandler said he can’t be opinionated when dealing with clients, it doesn’t mean he doesn’t agree with bail standards in the state.

“The people selling drugs to our kids, they might as well be killing them,” Chandler said. “They aren’t your friends.”