Bounty hunting Glossary

The glossary of a Bounty hunter
Bail bondsman': A person who guarantees bail for prisoners, usually charging them a 10% nonrefundable deposit, and who is responsible for paying bail if they flee.

Bail enforcement agent: Another term for bounty hunter.

Bounty: Money paid for the return of a criminal, typically ten to twenty percent of the total bail bond.

Custodian: Term for a person put up for bail instead of money (under old British and pre-constitutional American law) who could be punished - even hanged - in the accuser's place if he fled.

Eighth Amendment: Constitutional Amendment that guarantees the accused the right to reasonable bail.

FTA: Failure-to-appear, the technical term for skipping out on bail.

Fugitive: From the latin fugere, meaning "to flee," the word has been with us since Middle English, but could vanish at any moment.

Fugitive recovery agent: Another term for bounty hunter.

Illinois: The only state where bounty hunting is not allowed at all, and where a bond agent of another state may not operate even with a warrant.

Judas: Bounty hunter slang for a person who feels wronged by the accused (often because they put up the collateral for the skipped bail) and is willing to rat them out.

Midnight run: Bounty hunter slang for an easy capture, which also lent its name to a 1988 film starring Robert De Niro.

NABEA: The National Association of Bail Enforcement Agents, a group that provides services and legislative advocacy for the bounty hunter community.

Power of attorney: What a bounty hunter must acquire from a bail bondsman (which was signed over to him by the prisoner) before hunting down an accused.

Skips: Informal term for people who fail to make their court dates.

Skiptracing: The act of tracking someone down, usually through indirect methods such as hiring investigators or outsourcing to debt collectors.