“When felony defendants jump bail, bounty hunters spring into action. It’s a uniquely American system, and it works.”

Professor Alex Tabarrok highlighted the bounty hunting industry in an article for the Wilson Quarterly entitled “The Bounty Hunter’s Pursuit of Justice.”

The article is a fairly extensive profile of the bounty hunting industry.

Over the course of the article, we are given an example of a rich playboy fugitive running from rape charges, an example of the more common side of the fugitive recovery industry with the story of “Chrissy” and her aunt, and the history of bail bonds as well as the industry’s evolution. The article includes the celebrity bounty hunter Duane Chapman (a.k.a Dog the Bounty Hunter) and 2009 Professional Bail Agents of the United States agent of the year, Dennis Sew, to personify the industry in both terms of pop culture and the every day work of an agent.

*Alex Tabarrok is Bartley J. Madden Chair in Economics at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University and director of research for the Independent Institute.

You can read the full article here.