Fight Against SB562

Stand with me in the fight against SB562

TO: Members of the California State Legislature
RE: OPPOSITION TO SENATE BILL 562

To the Members of the Legislature:
I am writing to express my adamant opposition to Senate Bill 562. While framed under the guise of consumer protection and financial equity, this legislation demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of the private bail industry, contract law, and the realities of pretrial risk management. If enacted, SB 562 will disrupt the justice system, keep defendants incarcerated longer, and force tax-paying small businesses to operate at a catastrophic financial loss.
The fatal flaw of SB 562 is that it treats a commercial bail bond as a returnable retail commodity rather than a fully executed, high-risk service contract.
Our fee is earned from the moment we begin negotiations to determine not if you can afford our fees, but whether you are a good risk and will be accountable based on my risk assessment of you.
Before a bond is ever presented to a jail or court, a commercial bail agency performs intensive, highly specialized professional work that cannot be undone or "returned":
Rigorous Risk Underwriting: We do not simply trade freedom for cash. We spend exhaustive hours vetting human anchors, identifying sentimental equity, and establishing the exact relational leverage required to guarantee 100% court compliance.
Irrecoverable Sunk Costs: The moment a bond is executed, immediate and non-refundable financial obligations are triggered. Corporate surety underwriter cut fees are paid, and merchant credit card processing fees are permanently swallowed by banking institutions. Neither underwriters nor banks refund these costs when a transaction is reversed.
By forcing bail agencies to refund 98% of a premium if a prosecutor fails to file charges within 21 days, SB 562 legally mandates that small businesses absorb a net financial loss for services fully rendered. No industry can survive being forced to underwrite complex, constitutional risk for free.
Furthermore, this bill will have severe, unintended consequences for the very defendants it claims to protect:
1 "Freedom Delayed" for Incarcerated Individuals: To survive the financial hazard created by SB 562, agencies will have no choice but to adjust their risk tolerance. Instead of securing an immediate release at the time of arrest, agents will be forced to wait until formal charges are filed at arraignment. This means defendants will sit in county jails for an extra 3 to 5 days, disrupting their employment and families, purely to accommodate a legislative flaw.
2 The Double-Premium Trap: Prosecutors routinely experience backlogs that result in an initial "no-file" at the 21-day mark, only to refile the charges weeks later once evidence is finalized. Under SB 562, the original bond would be forcefully exonerated and refunded. When the state refiles, the defendant will be re-arrested and forced to pay a second premium for a new bond on the exact same case.
SB 562 hitches the survival of private enterprise to the bureaucratic speed and inefficiencies of county prosecutors. It penalizes the bail industry for performing a vital, constitutionally protected service that maintains public safety and holds defendants accountable—all at zero cost to the taxpayer.
For these reasons, I urge you to vote NO on Senate Bill 562.