A Florida law lets clerks keep money to cover fines and fees when it comes from friends, family or charitable organizations instead of a commercial bondsman.
“They need to get the money back so that they can bail out the next person. So what they’re doing is they post cash bonds, and they’re betting that this person will come back and appear as required so that the clerks can’t forfeit it. If they do that, the money is supposed to come back to them so they can bail out the next person and so on and so forth," says ACLU lawyer Jerry Edwards. "And that way they’re kind of working together with the people they bail out to help other people get bailed out in the future. And this statute basically makes that impossible to do in a sustainable way."