A U.S. specialty insurance company. Has provided surety bonds to bail bond company Libre by Nexus.
RLI Corp is a specialty insurance company based in Peoria, Illinois that operates and provides insurance in all fifty states. In 2018, the company reported $818 million in revenue.
RLI’s subsidiary RLI Insurance Company underwrites bonds for Libre by Nexus, the e-carceration subsidiary Nexus Services Inc, which posts bail for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Instead of having detainees post collateral such as a cash or property - as is commonly done by bail companies in the criminal punishment system - Libre requires them to use an electronic monitoring device that monitors their movement 24/7. The detainee is responsible for paying Libre twenty percent of the bond, delivery and activation fees for the device, and a rental fee of $420 a month. Many times these fees total more than the amount of the original bond. This business model has been described as predatory, as many detainees don’t understand the contract Libre has them sign, or its implications.
Between February 2016 and February 2017 alone, RLI Corp insured 2,400 bail bonds that were issued by Libre by Nexus. As of April 2018, over 2,000 of these bonds were still in force.