The California Bail Fugitive Recovery Agent license
Bail Fugitive Recovery Agent
Licensed to do what subdivision (d) of Penal Code section 1299.01 describes, which is to apprehend a bail fugitive. The Insurance Code grants the license and the Penal Code defines the work, and the twenty classroom hours are waived outright for anybody already holding a bail agent or bail permittee license.
Course
20 hrs
The shortest single course route.
Ways in
2
None of them requires a state exam, because this license has none.
Exam
n/a
Not required on any of the routes below.
Every way to qualify
More than one route leads to this license, and which one you take changes what you study and whether you sit the exam. They are listed in full because the course is only the first of them.
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Route 1 Take the twenty-hour classroom course
No state exam for this license
Prelicensing course
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20 hours of the duties and responsibilities of a bail licensee, including all laws and regulations related to them, the rights of the accused, and ethics, approved by the Department. 20 of those hours cannot be taken at your own pace, so a fully self-paced online course does not satisfy this on its own. The route's own note says which live formats the state accepts
and bond
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a bond in the penal sum of $1,000, executed by a California admitted surety
California Insurance Code section 1802.3 grants the license "to engage in the activities of a bail fugitive recovery agent as set forth in subdivision (d) of Section 1299.01 of the Penal Code", so what the licensee may do is defined in a different code from the one that licenses them. The twenty hours are the same approved prelicensing classroom study the bail agent, the bail permittee and the bail solicitor take. The license costs $622 to file and $188 to renew.
Read at the Department on 2026-08-20
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Route 2 Hold an active bail agent or bail permittee license
No state exam for this license
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an active California bail agent license
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an active California bail permittee license
The Department writes the waiver in one sentence: "Active Bail Agents and Permittees are exempt from this requirement."It reaches the course and nothing else, and it is an exemption for somebody who has already taken exactly those twenty hours for their other license.
Read at the Department on 2026-08-20
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A course is required and nobody sells one
There is nothing a national seller can sell. California's own register holds 17 approved bail courses and every one of them is Contact delivery, the register's word for classroom or live webinar, taught on named dates in Riverside, Glendale and Roseville by the Bail Resource Center and the Bail Education Association. Twenty hours in a room in California is not a product a national seller can put online, and these are the same twenty hours the bail agent takes. A holder of an active bail agent or bail permittee license skips them altogether.