Undoubtedly it was humiliating and terrifying to be grabbed from the comforts of home by authority of bounty hunters, but that was just a start. Next, the handcuffed woman was put on display as a trophy at a seminar for would-be bounty hunters being held in a banquet room of a local motel. And it gets stranger still. The frantic husband called the police, only to be told that the bounty hunters were on firm legal footing. The charge by which that person was arrested never enters into it, explains Mel Barth, head of the National Association of Bail Enforcement Agents.
Bounty hunters arrest on civil law.
The arrest is made by virtue of the contract between the defendant, who is now a fugitive, and the bail bondsman. The defendant, at the time of being released, signs a contract with the bondsman and within that contract gives the bail bondsman the right to rearrest him, by whatever means necessary, if certain clearly specified rules are not followed, Barth tells Insight. Under civil law dating back to medieval times, the contract between the bail bondsman and the fugitive is the bounty-hunter s warrant. Barth, who says his 3,200 members arrest more than 30,000 fugitives a year, opines that the general public does not understand that bounty hunters are enforcing civil contracts and do not, technically, care whether the fugitive is a violent offender or someone who overslept on the day they were to appear in court on a traffic charge. What the public does tend to see, due to media attention and spin, is a portrait of bounty hunters as vigilantes and kidnappers who often make big mistakes, kicking down the wrong door in the middle of the night or injuring innocent victims.