Los Angeles Bail Bonds and Custody Information

In Los Angeles County, the bail bond and custody information below provides important facts and some helpful links.

Free Bail Bond Information for People Arrested in L.A. County

When someone is arrested anywhere in Los Angeles County, the jail usually enters the arrested person's name and booking information in a central database. Some of this information is available to the public. You can search for the person by name at the Inmate Information Center, a site operated by the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department.

To learn what the person was arrested for, you can either call the jail directly or have a bail agent find out for you. At 1st Class Bail Bonds, we provide this service free of charge. There is no obligation for you to purchase a bail bond just because a bail agent calls to find out information for you.

Los Angeles Superior Court Information

Another helpful resource is online court information. On the Los Angeles County Superior Court Web site you can find courthouse locations, hours and phone numbers. The site also gives information about appearing in court and more.

Court Appearances in Los Angeles County

Posting a bail bond or bail amount allows the defendant to go home while waiting for the scheduled court dates. If bail is not posted, then the defendant remains in custody. When a person goes to court while still in custody, the judge may change the bail terms. The bail amount might be lowered, raised or kept the same, or the judge might release the defendant on his or her "own recognizance," which is basically a promise to appear in court at the next scheduled date.

If the arrestee comes from a Los Angeles County jail, he or she will have to return to that jail to be processed out after the court appearance. In some situations, if a friend or family member brings a change of clothes to the courtroom, the arrestee can be released from the court lockup. He or she must retrieve their personal property from the L.A. County jail where they were previously being housed.

If after court the defendant still has bail set, the defendant will then be sent to one of the L.A. County jails. All defendants must be processed back into the jail before the bail agent can provide a bail bond on their behalf. Unfortunately, there is no way for the bail bond company to know how long it is going to take for the person to be processed. The jail will not accept the bail bond until the booking process is complete. This can take 8 to 24 hours, or even more when something goes wrong. In our experience, posting a Los Angeles bail bond takes far longer than it does in other counties due to the booking process.