Bail bond lobbyist says alleged felons should be on cash or surety bond before release

TOPEKA — The Kansas House acted with urgency to pass a bill endorsed by a jail bond lobbyist that mandates arrest warrants for people charged with felonies and restricts judges’ discretion to set bond conditions for defendants.

It cleared the House in February on a vote of 88-36, just 16 days after it was filed with little fanfare by Rep. Laura Williams, R-Lenexa. The legislation was initially met with indifference by the Kansas Senate, where the bill was put on ice after being denounced by a sheriff, prosecutor, judge, defense attorney, legislators and a civil rights activist. The Senate didn’t bother with the bill until it was resurrected last week at close of the annual legislative session.

“This bill is so bad the Senate didn’t even want to work it,” said Rep. Dan Osman, an attorney and Overland Park Democrat. “Who does care about this bill? The bond industry. They’re going to make so much money off this.”

Williams didn’t address Osman’s somebody-gets-rich view of House Bill 2610, but she said a goal was to bring accountability to the judicial branch by requiring arrest warrants for felonies and limiting written summons to misdemeanors. She said it was important to compel courts to issue arrest warrants for anyone missing a court date. Scofflaws should be held until they secure a cash bond paid directly to the court or a surety bond through a contract with a bail company, she said.

“These changes are straightforward, but impactful,” Williams said.

Shane Rolf, executive vice president of the Kansas Bail Agents Association, said a warrant was better than a summons because it provided greater deterrence for potential offenders and arrest of alleged felons would send a powerful message to the public.

“A warrant does not give accused defendants a head start to either flee, or more critically, to harass or threaten the victims or witnesses in a case,” Rolf said.

On the final day of the 2026 Legislature’s regular session, early Saturday, the House and Senate replaced the contents of House Bill 2651, an unrelated bill, with HB 2610 and sent it to Gov. Laura Kelly. The Senate vote was 28-12, while the House settled at 72-48.

If signed by the governor, the bill would flip a half-century standard in Kansas allowing judges to independently assess defendants regarding the setting of bond.

Attorney Jennifer Roth, who has worked for 27 years as a public defender, said the bill represented an unfortunate theme of this legislative session.

“Doing away with longstanding law relating to how people are brought to court and held or released while their case is pending, and replacing it with one-size-fits-all policy with no regard for prosecutorial discretion or law enforcement caseloads,” she said.

Practical considerations

Sedgwick County Sheriff Jeff Easter, who testified on behalf of the Kansas Sheriffs’ Association, said directing district and county attorneys to issue warrants whenever alleging a felony offense would regrettably draw first-time, low-level felonies into the dragnet.

He recommended lawmakers reconsider the goal of requiring arrest warrants when a person failed to appear for a court date.

“Has any research been conducted throughout the state on how many summonses have been issued on both felony and misdemeanor crimes to determine if a large number of citizens are not responding to summons to appear in court?” the sheriff said.

He said Kansas jails were crowded with people awaiting trial for murder and other heinous felonies. It didn’t make sense for people accused of urinating in public to occupy those cells.

Sedgwick County District Attorney Marc Bennett said his office last year filed 2,500 to 3,000 adult felony cases. Primarily due to decisions by the district attorney’s office, he said, a summons to appear in court — rather than a warrant — was attached to one-third of those cases.

“This bill would obligate our sheriff and other law enforcement to serve approximately 800 to 1,000 additional warrants just in Sedgwick County,” Bennett said. “Cases that we anticipate to be presumptive probation often begin via summons, as incarcerating someone is destabilizing and might actually exacerbate the circumstances that lead to their flight or recidivism.”

‘Not hospital’

Norbert Marek, a judge in the Jackson County District Court, said the legislation was an unfunded mandate that conflicted with recommendations of the Kansas Supreme Court’s pretrial task force. He said the bill failed to recognize the volume of felony offenses tied to presumptive probation. He said the measure could prevent release of a person on their own recognizance for medical reasons.

“Jails are not hospitals, but many of the people arrested have extensive medical issues,” Marek said. “If those people who often have no money cannot have an own recognizance bond, then counties will have to spend more money on medical devices.”

Logan DeMond, of the American Civil Liberties Union of Kansas, said mandating arrests and strict pretrial conditions based on the charge level rather than individualized risk to the public disproportionately harmed low-income Kansas because pretrial detention could result in job loss, eviction and disruption of child care. Judges ought to retain leeway to consider bonding based on prior record, flight risk and community ties, he said.

DeMond said mandatory sanctions for missing a court appearance didn’t take into account situations that had nothing to do with willful evasion.

“Such a shift only serves to increase rates of incarceration and deepen inequities in our justice system without clear evidence of an improvement to public safety or court appearance rates,” he said.

Kansas Reflector is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Kansas Reflector maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Sherman Smith for questions: info@kansasreflector.com. Follow Kansas Reflector on Facebook and Twitter.

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