Georgia Bail Laws, SB 63 and What Changed
Senate Bill 63 rewrote a lot of this in 2024. If you are reading a page that still says “120 days” or “10 percent,” it is out of date.
We answer 24 hours a day. If you can’t talk right now, send your details below and an agent will call you back as soon as one is free.
The law that decides whether your loved one comes home
Georgia’s bail statutes sit in Title 17, Chapter 6 of the Official Code of Georgia Annotated. Senate Bill 63 was signed by Governor Kemp on 1 May 2024 and took effect 1 July 2024, and it changed several things that matter to families in Cherokee County. A later bill, House Bill 1131 (Act 482), took effect 1 July 2026 and softened one part of it — see the family and charitable cash bond section below.
The two headline changes: it expanded the list of offenses requiring secured cash or surety bail by roughly thirty offenses, and it created a formal distinction between “bail” (secured, with a dollar amount) and “unsecured judicial release” (no dollar amount). It also lengthened the bond forfeiture timeline.
We are a bonding company, not a law firm, and none of this is legal advice. But you deserve to know what the rules actually say before you make decisions at two in the morning.
Key details
- Premium cap: 15%, minimum $50 per charge — § 17-6-30
- 48 hours to first appearance after warrantless arrest — § 17-4-62
- 72 hours after arrest on a warrant — § 17-4-26
- Superior-Court-only bond list — § 17-6-1(a)
- Bail restricted offenses — § 17-6-12
- Forfeiture and execution hearing — § 17-6-71
- Remission tiers — § 17-6-72
- Pretrial monitoring conditions — § 17-6-1.1
Statutes change and courts interpret them. Verify anything on this page against the current code before you rely on it, and talk to a lawyer about your actual case.
What Senate Bill 63 actually did
Effective 1 July 2024, SB 63 added roughly thirty offenses to the list requiring secured bail — among them criminal trespass, failure to appear, racketeering, domestic terrorism and rioting. It created the statutory term unsecured judicial release for release without a monetary amount, and made anyone charged with a bail restricted offense ineligible for it.
Under O.C.G.A. § 17-6-12(b), a judge may grant an unsecured judicial release only if the accused is not charged with a bail restricted offense, has no bail jumping conviction within five years, and has no bench warrant for failure to appear within five years. Subsection (d) is blunt: “No person charged with a bail restricted offense shall be eligible for release by any judge on an unsecured judicial release.”
In practical terms: for a large and growing list of charges in Georgia, somebody has to post money or property before anyone goes home.
Georgia bail law after Senate Bill 63.
Some of the offenses that now require a secured bond
This is not the complete list — O.C.G.A. § 17-6-12(a)(1) runs to dozens of entries — but it covers the charges we see most often in Cherokee County.
- DUI, habitual violator, fleeing or attempting to elude
- Reckless driving and reckless stunt driving on a second or subsequent offense
- Crimes involving family violence under 19-13-1
- Battery, aggravated assault, aggravated battery
- Robbery, burglary, theft by taking (second or subsequent), theft by deception
- Financial transaction card fraud and theft, identity fraud, forgery
- Possession, purchase, manufacture, distribution or sale of controlled substances or marijuana
- Trafficking in cocaine, illegal drugs, marijuana or methamphetamine
- Possession of a firearm or knife during commission of certain crimes
- Possession of firearms by convicted felons and first offender probationers
- Obstruction of a law enforcement officer
- Criminal trespass on a second or subsequent offense
- Failure to appear on a second or subsequent offense
- Bail jumping, escape, stalking
- Participating in criminal gang activity
- Riot, inciting to riot, unlawful assembly, domestic terrorism
The offenses a Magistrate judge cannot bond
O.C.G.A. § 17-6-1(a) makes these bailable only before a judge of the Superior Court: treason; murder; rape; aggravated sodomy; armed robbery; home invasion in the first degree; aircraft hijacking and hijacking a motor vehicle in the first degree; aggravated child molestation; aggravated sexual battery; manufacturing, distributing, delivering, dispensing, administering or selling Schedule I or Schedule II controlled substances; trafficking under 16-13-31 or 16-13-31.1; kidnapping, arson, aggravated assault or burglary where the accused has a qualifying prior or was on probation, parole or bail; arson of a law enforcement vehicle; aggravated stalking; trafficking of persons for labor or sexual servitude; and criminal street gang offenses.
What happens on a failure to appear — and the number that changed
O.C.G.A. § 17-6-71, as amended by SB 63, requires the judge at the end of the court day to forfeit the bond and issue a bench warrant. If that is not done within ten days, the surety is released from liability. The court then sets an execution hearing not sooner than 150 days and not later than 180 days after the failure to appear.
That replaced the old 120-to-150-day window. Any page still quoting “120 days” as current Georgia law has not been updated since June 2024.
The clerk must serve notice of the execution hearing and a copy of the bench warrant on the surety within ten days, and the statute says that requirement “shall be adhered to strictly.” Defective notice relieves the surety.
Getting money back after a forfeiture
- Surrender the principal within 150 days of judgment (or prove surrender was denied): the surety pays only costs and 5 percent of the face amount — § 17-6-72(c)/(e).
- 95 percent remission where the bond is paid within 150 days of judgment and the principal is produced, surrenders, appears, is proven incarcerated elsewhere, or has died — § 17-6-72(d)(1).
- 50 percent remission on the two-year track, with the application filed within 60 days after the two-year mark — § 17-6-72(d)(2).
- 100 percent remission on payment of court costs and the expenses of returning the principal — § 17-6-72(d)(3).
- Conditions that do not warrant forfeiture include a licensed physician’s written statement of disability or involuntary inpatient treatment, and detention or confinement in a penal or mental institution.
The sheriff, not the state insurance department
O.C.G.A. § 17-6-50 declares that people who hold themselves out as signers or sureties of bonds for compensation are professional bondsmen, and puts approval in the hands of the county sheriff. Requirements include being at least 18, a Georgia resident for at least one year before application, good moral character with no felony conviction or crime of moral turpitude, and sheriff approval. The sheriff must run a criminal background check using two sets of fingerprints submitted to the Georgia Crime Information Center and forwarded to the FBI.
§ 17-6-15(b)(1) adds documentation of company composition, employee authorisation, valid business licences, fingerprints and background checks, and cash escrow accounts or collateral. Bail recovery agents under § 17-6-56 must be US citizens aged 25 or older and licensed under 16-11-129, and sheriffs require bondsmen to register the recovery agents they use.
This is why the Sheriff’s approved bonding company list matters. Cherokee Bail Bonds is on it. If a company is not, ask why.
What a judge can order as a condition of release
Under O.C.G.A. § 17-6-1.1 a Georgia court may impose home confinement, curfews, restrictions on alcohol and controlled substances, orders to submit to breath, blood or urine testing, travel limitations and employment conditions, and electronic monitoring. The defendant normally pays the monitoring provider a non-refundable enrolment and monitoring fee, and non-payment means immediate return to custody. On family violence charges, § 17-6-1(f)(2) requires no-contact conditions. On gang charges, § 17-6-1(f)(4) requires increased bail and a no-contact condition covering gang members and associates.
The three-bond limit and the litigation around it
O.C.G.A. § 17-6-15(b)(4), as amended by SB 63, states that no more than three cash bonds may be posted per year by any individual, corporation, organisation, charity, nonprofit or group in any jurisdiction, and requires charitable bail funds to meet the same requirements as a professional surety company. Violation is a misdemeanor. Georgia has since carved out families. House Bill 1131, signed as Act 482 and effective 1 July 2026, amended § 17-6-15 to add that the three-bond limit “shall not apply to a natural person posting a cash bond on behalf of an immediate family member.” If you are posting cash for your own spouse, parent, child or sibling, that cap no longer reaches you.
That provision was challenged in federal court in Barred Business v. Kemp. A preliminary injunction issued on 12 July 2024, and the Eleventh Circuit heard oral argument on 31 July 2025. We have not been able to confirm a decision since, so treat the wider three-bond limit as enjoined but unsettled.
Two moving parts here: the family-member exemption in HB 1131 is settled law from 1 July 2026, while the wider three-bond limit remains under appeal. The expanded cash-bail offense list from SB 63, by contrast, is fully in force and is what affects most cases.
Questions we get asked
A charge on the list in O.C.G.A. § 17-6-12 for which a judge may not grant an unsecured judicial release. Bail has to be secured by cash, approved property or a licensed surety.
Not entirely. It renamed release without a monetary amount “unsecured judicial release” and made it unavailable for anyone charged with a bail restricted offense, or with a bail jumping conviction or a failure-to-appear bench warrant within the past five years.
No. O.C.G.A. § 17-6-30 caps it at 15 percent of the face amount, with a $50 minimum per bonded charge, and the Cherokee County Sheriff publishes the same figure.
The execution hearing is set 150 to 180 days after the failure to appear, and remission tiers under § 17-6-72 turn on acting within 150 days of judgment. The old 120-day figure was superseded on 1 July 2024.
The county sheriff, under O.C.G.A. § 17-6-50 — not the state insurance department. In Cherokee County that means the Sheriff’s approved bonding company list.
Related Cherokee County guides
Talk to a licensed Cherokee County bondsman right now.
We answer 24 hours a day. No pressure, no sales pitch — just an honest read on what happens next.