Hello, I'm Charlie Roadman. If you're watching this, you've either hired us to do a jail release or you're thinking about hiring us to do a jail release. So I wanted to go through the process.

Once you've retained us to get someone out of jail, that becomes our top priority immediately. So there may be a period where an hour, an hour and a half goes by and you haven't heard from us, but that's because we're in the bowels of the jail, getting judges to do things. There's no scenario where we get them out at our convenience. We immediately ... We know how important it is, so we're focused on that the entire time. We will communicate with you by calling or texting or occasionally email as the major points happen, as when we get the bond filled out, when we get the bond signed, when we've posted the bond. And there is a way for you to sort of follow it a little bit online on the Travis County website. If you Google Travis County inmate population, then you can enter the person's name and they'll sort of show you where they are in the process, and you'll see when the personal bond has been posted. And then you'll know they've been released because it'll just say we don't have anyone here by that name.

One of the questions that we're asked is whether we'll go see the person in jail before we start the process. That really depends on how far the process has already begun. If the client has already filled out a personal bond, it may be faster for us to just go straight to the judge without seeing the client first. If the process isn't very far along, then we'll go see the client to let them know that we're working on it because it's very stressful in jail. And it is extra stressful if you're not confident that someone on the outside is trying to get you out.

One of the steps of the process of getting a personal bond approved requires pretrial services, which is a Travis County agency, to call people on the outside, friends, relatives of the defendant, to confirm information on the personal bond. And what they really want to know is where the defendant lives, their job, whether they'll show up for court, and whether they have a drug or alcohol problem. So expect a call from them, and just answer those questions honestly, and that'll speed up the process.

Another question is how fast. We do this all day long every day. I would say that there's no one faster than us at getting people out of jail. However, there's a couple things that we can't control. The issue is the sheriff's deputies, the ones that are in charge of letting people out, they move at their own pace. There is no way for me to make them work any faster. They're actually kind of proud of their independence, and if I gave them grief about how slow they were working, they would only work slower to prove that they have more power in this situation than I do. Anyway, even when we post a bond, sometimes at 10:00 AM in the morning, it can be 5:00 PM before they get out. That's rare, but it's part of what I feel is my obligation to explain to you. I can't control a lot of things about the jail release. All I can guarantee is that we will make sure it goes as fast as possible.

If you've hired us or you're considering hiring us, one of the questions that you would want to know is, can we guarantee that we can get someone out of jail? And the answer is no. Nobody in this line of work can guarantee anything because I don't know all the facts. And in fact, you might not know all the facts [inaudible 00:04:25] hiring us because the person in jail could have other out of county warrants, or they could have other issues that none of us know about at this stage. I will say though that if you've hired us, you've probably talked to us already, and we've looked at as much of this information and we are highly optimistic that we can get your loved one out of jail. In fact, in the 15 years of doing this, I've never failed to get someone out of jail that has hired us to do it, mostly because if they talk to me and I'm not optimistic, I tell them, "You need to hire a bail bondsman or something else. You need to try another strategy." So if we've told you to hire us or said that we could do it, 99% sure that we're going to be able to get them out.

Once we've posted the bond and the sheriff's deputies have processed it, they will begin the process of releasing our client. And the client is going to walk out of the jail. Once our client gets released, we will send you a scheduler to schedule a meeting with us so we can explain what happens next. That is of course, phase two. Phase one is getting him or her out of jail. But we'll meet either the next day, or sometimes I even talk to people that night on the phone. But we will explain this whole thing from beginning to end. We've done it over and over thousands of times. We've got a lot of resources, FAQs online. I've written a book about DWIs here in Austin. We will be able to answer the questions about your car, where to pick it up, your driver's license. Basically everything involved with this type of case, we've handled hundreds, thousands of times, and we've figured out ways to make it clear to you what the next steps are.