A bounty hunter is a person who captures fugitives for a monetary reward (bounty). Other professional names, mainly used in the United States, include bail enforcement agent, bail agent, recovery agent, bail recovery agent, or fugitive recovery agent.
Sometimes, such a person is referred to as a bounty killer if a murder is required to collect the bounty.
Bounty hunters in the old West
In 1872, the Supreme Court ruled that bounty hunters were a part of the U.S. law enforcement system with a decision in Taylor v. Taintor:
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Modern times in the U.S.
In modern times, bounty hunters are known as Bail Enforcement Agents and carry out arrests mostly for those who have skipped bail with an average salary of $26,000 - $75,000. The idea of 'bounty hunting' is now not often used or liked by many in the profession due to its historical context.
Laws in the U.S. and Canada
In the United States legal system, the 1873 U.S. Supreme Court case Taylor v. Taintor, 16 Wall (83 U.S. 366, 21 L.Ed. 287), is cited as having established that the person into whose custody an accused is remanded as part of the accuser's bail has sweeping rights to that person (although this may have been accurate at the time the decision was reached, the portion cited was obiter dictum and has no binding precedential value). Most bounty hunters are employed by bail bondsmen: the bounty hunter is usually paid about 10% of the total bail amount, but this commission can vary on an individual, case-by-case basis; usually depending upon the difficulty level of the assignment and the approach used to exonerate the bail bond. If the fugitive eludes bail, the bondsman, not the bounty hunter, is responsible for 100% of the total bail amount. This is a way of ensuring his clients arrive at trial. In the United States, bounty hunters claim to catch 31,500 bail jumpers per year, about 90% of people who jump bail.
Bounty hunters are sometimes called "skiptracers", but this usage can be misleading. While bounty hunters are often skiptracers as well, skiptracing generally refers to the process of searching for an individual through less direct methods than active pursuit and apprehension, such as spies or debt collectors. It is a civil matter and does not always imply criminal conduct on the part of the individual being traced.
In the United States of America, bounty hunters have varying levels of authority in their duties with regard to their targets depending on which states they operate in. As opined in Taylor v. Taintor, and barring restrictions applicable state by state, a bounty hunter can enter the fugitive's private property without a warrant in order to execute a re-arrest. They cannot, however, enter the property of anyone other than the fugitive without a warrant or the owner's permission.
In some states, bounty hunters do not undergo any formal training, and are generally unlicensed, only requiring sanction from a bail bondsman to operate. In other states, however, they are held to varying standards of training and license. State legal requirements are often imposed on out-of-state bounty hunters, meaning a suspect could temporarily escape rearrest by entering a state in which the bail agent has limited or no jurisdiction.
Seven states (Florida, Illinois, Kentucky, North Carolina, Oregon, South Carolina, and Wisconsin), as well as the District of Columbia heavily restrict bounty hunting, or have banned the practice altogether. Several of these states have also banned the commercial bail bonds industry within their borders.
Connecticut
The State of Connecticut has a detailed licensing process which requires any person who wants to engage in the business as a bail enforcement agent (bounty hunter) must first obtain a professional license from the Commissioner of Public Safety; specifically detailing that "No person shall, as surety on a bond in a criminal proceeding or as an agent of such surety, engage in the business of taking or attempting to take into custody the principal on the bond who has failed to appear in court and for whom a re-arrest warrant or capias has been issued unless such person is licensed as a bail enforcement agent". Connecticut has strict standards which require Bail Enforcement Agents to pass an extensive background check and, while engaging in fugitive recovery operations, be uniformed, notify the local police barrack, wear a badge, and only carry licensed and approved firearms, including handguns and long guns which are permitted. Recently Connecticut State Police converted their Bail Enforcement Agent licensing unit to reflect the important role Bail Enforcement Agents play in the Connecticut criminal justice system; placing them in the newly defined Department of Emergency Services and Public Protection.
Several schools in Connecticut have obtained certification by the Connecticut State Police to pre-license Bail Enforcement Agents in a minimum of 20 hours of Criminal Justice training and a minimum of eight hours of firearms training. Some of the more advanced schools offer specialized training in the area of tactical firearms to prepare BEA's for conducting dangerous recovery operations.
Florida
In Florida, a bounty hunter must obtain a "limited surety agent" license from the Florida Department of Financial Services, Bureau of Agent and Agency Licensing, in order to legally apprehend bail fugitives.
Kentucky
Kentucky prohibits bounty hunting in any form. Only a peace officer may make an arrest on a warrant that is issued in NCIC. This is because the state does not have a system of bail bondsmen.
Louisiana
Louisiana requires bounty hunters to wear clothing identifying them as one.
Nevada
A Nevada bounty hunter is referred to as a bail enforcement agent. To acquire such license one must be at least 21 years old, a United States citizen, have a high school diploma or equivalent, undergo the extensive training and pass examination by the state to obtain a bail enforcement agent license within 9 months of initial date of employment by a bail agent.
Texas
A Texas bounty hunter is required to be a peace officer, Level III (armed) security officer, or a private investigator.
Wisconsin
The commercial bail bond industry is outlawed in Wisconsin. Wisconsin Statute § 969.12 provides that no surety can be compensated for serving as a surety, effectively eliminating the commercial bond market.
Canada
Bounty hunting in Canada is a totally prohibited practice.
Equipment
Agents when undertaking arrest warrants usually wear bullet-resistant vests, badges and other clothing branded with "BAIL ENFORCEMENT AGENT", or similar titles.
Although many agents arm themselves with firearms, there are a large proportion that do not, (such as Duane Dog Chapman) either due to previous criminal convictions preventing them from legally owning a firearm, or because of personal reasons. However, many arm themselves with less lethal weapons, such as tasers, batons, CS/pepper spray and pepper-spray projectiles.
Many agents also use two-way radios to communicate with each other.
Internationally
Laws and legal protection
Bounty hunters may run into serious legal problems if they try to apprehend fugitives outside the United States, where laws treat the re-arrest of any fugitive by private persons as kidnapping, or the bail agent may incur the punishments of some other serious crime if local and international laws are broken by them. While the United States government generally allows the activities of bounty hunters within the United States, the governments in other sovereign nations are not as tolerant of these activities where legally they are a felony.
Bounty hunter Duane "Dog" Chapman (star of the TV series Dog the Bounty Hunter) was arrested in Mexico after he apprehended the multi-millionaire rapist and fugitive Andrew Luster. Chapman was subsequently released and returned to the U.S. Chapman himself was later declared a fugitive by a Mexican prosecutor and was subsequently arrested in the United States to be extradited back to Mexico. Chapman maintains that under Mexico's citizen arrest law, he and his crew acted under proper policy.
Daniel Kear of Fairfax, Virginia pursued and apprehended Sidney Jaffe at a residence in Canada and returned him to Florida to face trial. Kear was extradited to Canada in 1983, and convicted of kidnapping.
Several bounty hunters have also been arrested for killing the fugitive or apprehending the wrong individuals, mistaking innocent people for fugitives.
Unlike police officers, they have no legal protections against injuries to non-fugitives and few legal protections against injuries to their targets.
In a Texas case, bounty hunters Richard James and his partner DG Pearson were arrested in 2001 for felony charges during an arrest. The charges were levied by the fugitive and his family, but were later dismissed against the hunters after the fugitive's wife shot a deputy sheriff in another arrest attempt of the fugitive by the county sheriff's department. The hunters sued the fugitive and family, winning the civil suit for malicious prosecution with a judgment amount of $1.5 million.
Rhodesia
During the Rhodesian Bush War, cattle rustling reached epidemic proportions in the late 1970s. This was part of a twofold strategy of the guerrillas against the white minority government in Salisbury. First, it led to starvation in the Tribal Trust Lands; second, it negatively affected the economy of Rhodesia. Because the army and the British South Africa Police were overstretched on three fronts, mercenaries were hired to confront the rustlers. They were called "Range Detectives", and most of them were Vietnam veterans, some of them members of The Crippled Eagles. Payment was roughly seven Rhodesian dollars a day, and a 750 Rhodesian dollar bonus for each rustler caught.
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