The mistaken attack on an Arizona family by masked bounty hunters, which resulted in four deaths in 1997, renewed demands by critics to do away with the practice of bounty hunting and place responsibility for finding and capturing fugitives to the police. They are a tax-free force that tracks down fugitives, saving police departments the time and the expense of having to do it themselves. An estimated 35,000 defendants jump bail annually and an astonishing 87 percent are brought back to justice by bounty hunters. Examining statistics compiled by the U.S. Department of Justice, Chamberlin found that commercial bondsmen are significantly better at finding, capturing and returning fugitives than are law-enforcement officers. In some jurisdictions, police departments captured only one in two defendants who had failed to appear in court after being released on their own recognizance or on bail not secured from commercial sources.
Bounty hunters enjoy broad rights in tracking down fugitives.
They can search a property without a warrant and avoid the extradition requirements that police must follow. These powers are based on the legal view that a commercial bond is an extension of jail, thus the bondsman has the same powers as a jailer to control the movements of a defendant. While it would be counterproductive to subject bounty hunters to the same constitutional restrictions as the police, some reforms of the system are in order given the abuses shown in the Arizona case, according to Chamberlin. Bounty hunters should be registered by state licensing boards and required to complete basic courses in criminal justice procedures. So far the only really effective state regulations have been enacted in Florida.