BAIL

10 definitions found across Law Mind sources

See encyclopedia: Bail and Bond -- Types, Determination, and Conditions →
BAILAuthored
The Law Mind • 1382 words
Definition
Bail has three distinct but related legal meanings, all descending from the same root concept of delivery into safe keeping. 1. In criminal procedure: The release of an arrested or accused person from custody, secured by a promise — often backed by money or property — that the person will appear at all required court proceedings. Bail is not punishment; it is a mechanism to balance the state's interest in ensuring appearance against the individual's interest in liberty before conviction. The term refers both to the process of release and to the security deposited or pledged to obtain that release. 2. As a noun referring to the sureties: The persons who undertake responsibility for the accused's appearance. In older usage, "the bail" meant the sureties themselves — the individuals who stood behind the accused and pledged to produce them or forfeit the bond. This usage is now largely archaic in American practice but remains significant in historical sources. 3. In civil and property law: A delivery of personal property by one person to another for a specific purpose, to be returned when that purpose is accomplished. In this sense, bail is essentially synonymous with bailment and describes the act of handing over goods in trust. A pawnor delivers property to a pawnbroker; a customer leaves a coat at a dry cleaner — both are acts of bail in the civil sense.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): To secure the release of an arrested person by providing bail; to remove water from a boat by scooping it out; to hand over personal property to be held temporarily by another. Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): A bucket or scoop used in bailing water out of a boat. The nautical and scooping senses of the word are entirely unrelated to legal bail. More importantly, colloquial usage — "bailing someone out," "posting bail" — captures the criminal-procedure meaning reasonably well, but the public often conflates bail (the security or the process) with bond (the instrument through which a surety guarantees the obligation). Researchers should note that in common speech, "bail" and "bond" are used interchangeably; in legal sources, they are not.
Common Confusion
Bail, bond, and recognizance are three distinct instruments that historical and modern sources sometimes use loosely. A recognizance is a formal acknowledgment of an obligation already existing, entered into before a court or magistrate; no money need change hands. A bail bond is a written instrument in which a surety undertakes to pay a penalty if the accused fails to appear. Bail is the broader concept — the release mechanism — of which bond and recognizance are specific implementing forms. Older sources, particularly Burrill and Rapalje, often use "bail" to mean the sureties themselves, not the security instrument. Researchers reading 19th-century treatises must pay attention to whether "bail" refers to persons or to process.
Recognized Forms
/SUBTYPES Bail in the criminal-procedure sense takes several recognized forms: — Personal recognizance (OR release): The accused is released on their own promise to appear, without financial security. Also called release on one's own recognizance or ROR. — Unsecured bond: The accused promises to pay a specified amount if they fail to appear, but deposits nothing in advance. — Cash bail: The accused or a third party deposits the full bail amount with the court; it is returned upon appearance. — Surety bond: A licensed bail bondsman (surety) posts a commercial bond for a fee (typically a percentage of the bail amount). The fee is nonrefundable. This is the form most familiar from popular culture. — Property bond: Real property is pledged as security in lieu of cash. — Conditional release: Release subject to specific non-monetary conditions — electronic monitoring, travel restrictions, no-contact orders — that may accompany any of the above forms.
Why It Matters in Research
The criminal-procedure and civil-law meanings of bail diverge sharply and researchers must identify which sense a source is using before citing it. A 17th-century treatise discussing bail in the context of goods and chattels is not discussing pretrial release; it is discussing what would today be called bailment. The surety sense of bail — "the bail" as the persons responsible — was dominant in English and early American legal writing. Cases discussing whether "the bail" may surrender their principal, or whether "the bail is exonerated," use bail as a noun referring to persons, not process. This is a persistent trap in pre-20th-century sources. Constitutionally, the Eighth Amendment prohibits excessive bail but does not guarantee a right to bail in all cases. The modern framework is heavily shaped by the Bail Reform Act of 1984 and its predecessors, which introduced federal preventive detention — a concept largely absent from 19th-century sources. Researchers using historical dictionaries to interpret modern constitutional bail doctrine will find those sources incomplete on this point; they predate the preventive detention framework entirely. Jurisdictional variation is substantial. Several states have moved to eliminate or sharply curtail cash bail by statute or court rule, producing a body of recent law that has no counterpart in the historical dictionaries. Corpus researchers working on bail reform materials should not assume historical definitions reflect current operative law in any specific jurisdiction. Bail jumping and forfeiture practice — what happens when an accused fails to appear — connects bail doctrine to bond forfeiture proceedings, which are civil in character even when arising from criminal cases. See the encyclopedia entry on Bail Jumping and Failure to Appear for that branch of the doctrine.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary provides the most thorough historical treatment, tracing bail to the Latin ballium and the Law French bail and baille, all centering on the concept of safe keeping or protection (custodia, protectio, tutela). Burrill's framing — "a delivery of a person arrested, out of the custody of the law, into the safe keeping or friendly custody of" the sureties — captures the essential pre-modern theory: the sureties took physical and moral custody of the accused, not merely financial responsibility. This explains the older rule that bail could physically restrain and surrender their principal, a power that made conceptual sense under the custodial theory but sits awkwardly in modern practice. Black's Law Dictionary (2nd Ed.) bridges the historical and modern, recognizing both the criminal and civil senses and distinguishing among bail, bond, and recognizance more carefully than earlier sources. Black's also reflects the late-19th-century American consolidation of bail practice that moved away from personal suretyship toward commercial bonding — a commercial development the earlier English-rooted dictionaries do not fully anticipate. Rapalje & Lawrence and Anderson's Dictionary of Law treat bail more briefly. Anderson's is useful for its attention to the procedural mechanics of forfeiture and the conditions under which sureties are discharged, topics where the other dictionaries are less precise. None of the historical sources address preventive detention, risk-assessment instruments, or the constitutional framework established after the Bail Reform Act of 1984. On those questions, historical dictionary support is absent by necessity rather than oversight.
Jurisdictional Note
American bail practice is governed primarily by state law, and variation is significant. Several states — including New Jersey, Illinois, and New Mexico — have substantially reformed or eliminated cash bail for most offenses. Federal practice is governed by the Bail Reform Act of 1984. The Eighth Amendment's excessive-bail clause has been incorporated against the states but sets only a ceiling, not a floor; states may impose stricter protections.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
Eighth Amendment — Excessive Bail and Pretrial Detention (The Law Mind Criminal Law Encyclopedia) Bail and Bond — Types, Determination, and Conditions (The Law Mind Criminal Law Encyclopedia) Bail Jumping and Failure to Appear (The Law Mind Criminal Law Encyclopedia)
Related Terms
Bailment (civil delivery of goods); Bond (surety instrument implementing bail); Recognizance (court-acknowledged obligation to appear); Surety (the person or entity backing the bail obligation); Pretrial detention (confinement despite bail eligibility); Personal recognizance; Bail bondsman; Forfeiture (consequence of failure to appear); Eighth Amendment; Preventive detention; Release conditions
BAILmain
Rapalje & Lawrence • 1888
(104) BACKWARD AND FORWARD, (in marine inlonger, and the persons to whom granted must surance policy). 1 Taunt. 463. enter into a recognizance that they will not by color of their licences forestal, or do any thing contrary to the statutes made against forestallers, ingrossers and regrators. If any person shall act as a badger without licence, he is to forfeit £5, one moiety to the king, and the other to the prosecutor, leviable by warrant from justices of the peace, &c.-Jacob. (105) action. The ordinary mode of commencpiece" with the proper officer, and by the ing an action was by serving the defendant bail entering into a recognizance binding with a capias and notice to appear (see CAthemselves as sureties for the defendant. PIAS AD RESPONDENDUM), and thereupon Bail was put in absolutely if the plaintiff the defendant appeared and put in sureties consented to the bail, or de bene esse if for his future attendance and obedience, they were subject to his afterwards exceptwhich sureties were called "common bail," ing to them; in the latter case the bail, after "being the same two imaginary persons entering into the recognizance, made affithat were pledges for the plaintiff's prosedavits of justification, and if the plaintiff cution, John Doe and Richard Roe," but excepted to them they had to justify (see this was abolished by Stats. 2 Will. IV. c. JUSTIFICATION), or the defendant might 39, and 1 and 2 Vict. c. 110. add (i. e. substitute) other bail, who had to justify instead of the original bail; in either case, if the justification was successful a rule of allowance was drawn up, when the bail was said to be perfected. (Chit. Pr. 727; Sm. Ac. (II.) 233.) The practice of giving bail below and bail above in ordinary actions was abolished in England by the Debtor's Act, 1869, § 6, doing away with arrest on mesne process; but the practice remains as respects a certain class of actions, in the States which have not adopted Codes of Procedure.* 2. Bail below, or to the sheriff. - In certain cases the plaintiff might, by making an affidavit as to the amount of the cause of action (called an "affidavit to hold to bail"), arrest the defendant and make him put in substantial sureties for his appearance, who were called "bail below" or "bail to the sheriff," because they and the defendant entered into a bond (called the "bail bond") in favor of the sheriff, to secure the debt sued for, and conditioned for the appearance of the defendant and the putting in of special bail in due course. If the defendant did not comply with the condition the plaintiff might take an assignment of the bail bond from the sheriff and enforce it against the sureties, or compel the sheriff either to render the defendant (technically called "bringing in the body") or to put in special bail for him. This kind of bail is still required in bailable actions, in States proceeding according to the course of the common law. 4. Bail in error.-Another kind of bail is bail in error, given by a defendant in an action when he is going to bring error on the judgment and wishes execution to be stayed in the meantime. The practice is similar to that of putting in special bail (supra, ¿3.) (Sm. Ac. (II.) 232) See SECURITY. 25. In admiralty actions. - Where a ship, cargo, or other property has been arrested, the defendant may have it released on giving bail for its value. The 3. Special bail. - Special bail (bail above or bail to the action) were persons bail consists of two sureties, who execute who undertook that if the defendant were a bond called a "bail-bond." Wms. & B. condemned in the action he should pay Adm. Pr. 210 et seq. See APPRAISEMENT; the debt or render himself to prison. The RELEASE. operation of procuring special bail was § 6. In criminal proceedings.-Where called "putting in bail," and was effected a person is accused before a magistrate of by leaving a memorandum called the "bail an indictable offence, and there is suffi- *In England, in ordinary actions bail in the court to the High Court, either before judgment old sense has been abolished, but a somewhat or after judgment, by writ of error. Bail generanalogous proceeding still exists under 6 of ally consists of a bond or recognizance by the the Debtor's Act, 1869, which prevents a defendparty, and two sureties. (Stat. 19 Geo. III. c. ant from leaving England unless he gives secu-70; Arch. Pr. 875, 1406, 1423.) In a proceedrity, if his evidence is necessary to the plaintiff ing by foreign attachment, giving bail is one of (Coe Pr. 165); and under Order XIV. of the the modes by which the defendant may dissolve Rules of Court, which enables a plaintiff, where the attachment; bail are also required to enable the defendant has no defence, to sign judgment unless security is given. Bail may still be required to be given by the defendant in certain actions for the recovery of land, and in cases where a cause in which the cause of action does mot amount to £20, is removed from an inferior him to appear by means of a scire facias ad disprobandum debitum; the bail must in either case be special bail, i. e. bail to render the defendant or pay what shall be recovered against him if the plaintiff recover judgment. Brand. For. Att. 106.
BAILmain
Burrill's Law Dictionary • 1867
[L. Fr. bail, baile, baille; L. Lat. ballium, bailium, baila.] In old law. Safe keeping, or protection; (custodia, protectio, tutela.) Spelman, voc. Ballium. Co. Litt. 61 b. See Bail, L. Fr. In practice. A delivery into safe keeping or protection, (traditio in ballium). Spelman, ub. sup. A delivery of a person À arrested, out of the custody of the law, into the safe keeping or friendly custody of persons who become sureties for his return or appearance. Id. ibid. The sureties themselves, into whose custody the party discharged from actual arrest ΒΑΙ ΒΑΙ (174) is supposed to be delivered. 3 Bl. Com.titious proceeding, intended only to express 290. Finch, Law, b. 4, ch. 44, p. 446. the appearance of a defendant, in cases This is the only sense in which the word where special bail is not required. It is bail, as a noun, is now used; the act of put in in the same form as special bail, but bailing being still expressed in the bail-piece, the sureties are merely nominal or imaginaby these words:-"C. D. is delivered to bail, ry persons, as John Doe and Richard Roe. [in the old forms, traditur in ballium] on 3 Bl. Com. 287. the taking of his body, to J. N. and J. S." Protec- &c. See Bail-piece, Bail to the sheriff, Special bail, Common bail. ** The radical meaning of bail is undoubtedly, a delivery, (from Fr. bailler, to deliver;) or, in its present use, a person to whom another is delivered, under certain stipulations; just as a bailee, (which is essentially the same word) in another branch of law, is a person to whom goods are delivered for a certain purpose. See Bailee. The sense of safe keeping, which also enters into its meaning, is derived from the old French and Italian law, in which baillie, and balio (baila, bailium and ballium,) signified guardianship, wardship, or protection. See Baila, Balium. Bail are regarded in law as the keepers of their principal, and are said to have him always "in a string," which they may pull whenever they please; and render him in their discharge. 6 Mod. 131. 1 Tidd's Pr. 285. BAIL TO THE SHERIFF, or BAIL BE-
BAILmain
Black's Law Dictionary (2nd Ed.) • 1910
use, but for other purposes, such as a sale and the like. The term includes whatever the passenger takes with him for his persoual use or convenience according to the habits or wants of the particular class to which he belongs, either with reference to the immediate necessities or ultimate purpose of the journey. Macrow v. Railway Co.. L. R. 6 Q. B. 612; Bomar v. Maxwell, 9 Humph. (Tenn.) 621, 51 Am. Dec. 682; Railroad Co. v. Collins, 56 Il. 217; Hawkins vy. Hoffman, 6 Hill (N. Y.) 590, 41 Am. Dec. 767; Mauritz v. Railroad Co. («. C.) 23 Fed. 771; Dexter v. Railroad Co., 42 N. ¥. 326, 1 Am. Rep. 527; Story, Bailm. § 499. Fr. In French and Canadian law. <A lease of lands. —Bail a cheptel. A contract by which one of the parties gives to the other cattle to keep. feed, and care for, the borrower receiving half the profit of increase, and bearing half the loss. Duverger—Bail a ferme. A contract of letting lands—Bail A longues années. A lease for more than nine years; the same as bail emphyteotique (see infra) or an emphyteutic lease.—Bail a loyer. <A contract of letting houses.—B a rente. A contract partaking of the nature of the contract of sale, and that of the contract of lease: it is translative of property. and the ‘rent is essentially redeemable. Clark’s Heirs v. Christ’s Church, 4 La. 285: Poth. Bail a Rente, 1, 3.—Bail emphyteotique. An emphyteutic lease; a lease for a term of years with a right to prolong indefinitely; practically equivalent to an alienation.
BAILn.
Websters Unabridged Dictionary (1913) • 1913
A bucket or scoop used in bailing water out of a boat. [Obs.] The bail of a canoe . . . made of a human skull. Capt. Cook.
BAILv.
Websters Unabridged Dictionary (1913) • 1913
To lade; to dip and throw; -- usually with out; as, to bail water out of a boat. Buckets . . . to bail out the water. Capt. J. Smith. To dip or lade water from; -- often with out to express completeness; as, to bail a boat. By the help of a small bucket and our hats we bailed her out. R. H. Dana, Jr.
BAILv.
Websters Unabridged Dictionary (1913) • 1913
To deliver; to release. [Obs.] Ne none there was to rescue her, ne none to bail. Spenser. To set free, or deliver from arrest, or out of custody, on the undertaking of some other person or persons that he or they will be responsible for the appearance, at a certain day and place, of the person bailed. To deliver, as goods in trust, for some special object or purpose, upon a contract, expressed or implied, that the trust shall be faithfully executed on the part of the bailee, or person intrusted; as, to bail cloth to a tailor to be made into a garment; to bail goods to a carrier. Blackstone. Kent.
bailverb
Wiktionary (English) • 2026
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To secure the release of an arrested person by providing bail. | To release a person under such guarantee. | To hand over personal property to be held temporarily by another as a bailment. | To remove (water) from a boat by scooping it out. | To remove water from (a boat) by scooping it out. | To set free; to deliver; to release.
bailnoun
Wiktionary (English) • 2026
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A hoop, ring or handle (especially of a kettle or bucket). | A stall for a cow (or other animal) (usually tethered with a semi-circular hoop). | A hinged bar as a restraint for animals, or on a typewriter. | A frame to restrain a cow during milking or feeding. | A hoop, ring, or other object used to connect a pendant to a necklace. | One of the two wooden crosspieces that rest on top of the stumps to form a wicket. | Normally curved handle suspended between sockets as a drawer pull. This may also be on a kettle or pail.
bailnoun
Wiktionary (English) • 2026
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Security, usually a sum of money, exchanged for the release of an arrested person as a guarantee of that person's appearance for trial. | Release from imprisonment on payment of such money. | The person providing such payment. | A bucket or scoop used for removing water from a boat etc. | A person who bails water out of a boat. | Custody; keeping.

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