BELTON - A common complaint among defense attorneys in Bell County is that there is a disproportionate amount of money spent on bailing prisoners out of jail and not enough on hiring counsel.

The attorneys say they see a pattern play out over and over again. A defendant who is bailed out of jail has no money left for attorney fees and ends up with court appointed representation, where the bill is footed by the taxpayer.

Commercial bail activity in the county for the month of September indicates that it is big business. Nineteen companies pledged $3.39 million to the court system, guaranteeing their clients would show up for future court dates.

Commercial bond companies don’t just pledge that kind of money on good will. Defendants pay for the service.

Bond companies prefer to keep bail amounts confidential, but people familiar with the business say defendants typically pay companies between 10 and 20 percent of their bail in exchange for their freedom.

Based on those figures, bond companies operating in Bell County likely took in somewhere between $339,000 and $678,000 in September alone.

The county also runs a bonding agency, called personal bond. In the past it was officially called PR bond, which stands for personal recognizance. The term is still used by many.

A defendant who uses the county’s personal bond service would find its rates much lower than commercial bond companies. The office only seeks to cover minimal operating expenses and charges 3 percent of the total bail amount.

The services of PR bond are limited to those incarcerated on misdemeanor or state jail felony charges.

“Our PR bond office allows low-risk people to get out of jail,” said County Judge Jon Burrows. “It allows them to post bond at a lower cost.”

For three weeks in September PR bond wrote 40 bonds, 30 of which were for $1,000. That means 30 people who committed low-level crimes such as writing a bad check or driving while intoxicated were able to bail out of jail for $30.

If the estimates on commercial bond companies are valid, those same defendants would have paid between $100 and $300 to a private company for the same service.

Thirteen of the bonds written by PR bond during that timeframe were for capias profine, which is a charge issued when an offender falls behind on court mandated payments.

In that case PR bond usually consults with the offender, develops a new payment plan and sends them on their way, said Linda Ingraham, director of PR bond in Bell County.

“It’s better to let them get back to work and concentrate on paying the fine than to have them sitting in jail,” she said.

Proving the attorneys’ claims that defendants who bail out of jail often don’t have enough money to hire an attorney is difficult. But it seems natural that many people, particularly those committing crimes, when faced with the choice of spending money on an attorney or getting out of jail would choose the get out of jail option.

And just as the bail bond business is big in Bell County, so is the court appointed attorney business.

In fiscal year 2007, taxpayers paid an average of $108,088 a month in defense attorney fees for misdemeanor and felony cases. That average does not include related expenses such as expert witnesses or investigation expenditures.

Fiscal 2008 figures are being gathered and were not available Friday through the county court coordinator’s office.

One of the positive things about commercial bond companies is that they have an incentive to get defendants to court. When a defendant doesn’t show, they are on the hook for the full bail amount.

Sometimes getting people to show up for court can be a challenge, Ms. Ingraham said.

“If they (commercial bond companies) are anything like us (personal bond), the people they work with move 10 times before their court date.”