The Bail Bondsman usually takes as payment the other person's (friend or relative of the person on trial) title to their car, home, or some other very expensive thing. The idea is, that anyone who is willing to fork over thousands of dollars or the title to a vehicle or home in order to get a person out of jail obviously knows that person very well, and feels that there is little or no risk to handing over ownership of the title or cash. The premise being that anyone in that position, who is that close to the person in jail, will know them well enough to know if they would run from the law or not, and if they did were they would hide out. Also, they figure that the person putting up the cash or the title would be mad as a hatter if the person ran, because they would loose their money or title, so they are likely to keep close tabs on the person until they go to court (and help track them down if they run off).. . In addition, the bonding agency gets enough personal information about the person in jail and their friends/ family so if the person flees, the bondsman can usually track them down easy. They take information like full name, DOB, SSN, home/mail address, places they work/school, vehicles they own, property they own, physical description, and so on. Having all that info about the person needing a bond and that person's close relatives/ friends makes it really easy to track the person down if they flee. . . Also, the person/people posting the bond are usually made responsible for the person in jail. In other words, they are asked to 'babysit' the person when they get out of jail- check in with them every day, make sure things are ok, make sure they are not going to try to flee(and if they are, to call the bondsman asap). The bonding agency will usually call the responsible person(or people) every day or every other day to see how things are going with the person out on bond, and will also talk with the person out on bond at least once every 24 hours. If after talking with the person out on bond or the responsible person/people, the bonding agency feels the person on bond is a flight risk, they will send a bondsman to pick them up and take them back to jail.