S e c o n d e d I t I o n 1 Reading for the Real World 1

child support
for their children.
Sometimes, criminals who run away from the 
police or don’t show up at court are helped to hide by 
their friends and family, or they may flee to another country where the laws are 
different from the laws of their native country. In these cases, the police may 
offer a special reward, or bounty, for anyone who helps to capture the fugitives. 
This is where the term, bounty hunter, comes from. Bounty hunters are not 
official members of the law-enforcement community, but they have a special role 
to play nonetheless. They are paid to go after and capture criminals that the 
police are unable to find or are unable to capture. Sometimes the bounty, or 
reward, is small, just a few thousand dollars. Other times, however, the reward 
can be quite large, up to several million dollars. For example, in 2003, the 
United States put a twenty-five-million-dollar bounty out for Osama Bin Laden. 
If a bounty hunter were to find and capture Osama Bin Laden, he or she would 
become a very rich person. 
Bounty hunters 
operate
outside of jurisdictions, or boundaries, which 
means that they can go anywhere to catch a criminal while most police cannot. 
For example, a police officer in New York cannot go to California to follow a 
suspected
criminal. He or she must wait until the police in California catch the 
5
commit --- to perform
8
child support --- money paid to a spouse to care for children after divorce
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operate --- to work
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suspected --- assumed
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criminal or the criminal returns to New York. In most cases, if the crime that a 
person is suspected of is 
relatively
minor, or small, the police may not spend 
the time and money to 
chase
the person. However, if the person is wanted for a 
serious or dangerous crime, the police may send out notices offering rewards to 
whoever captures the suspect. This is where bounty hunters come in. 
Is bounty hunting legal? The answer is both yes and no. In most states, it is 
legal to go after people who have “
skipped
bail.” Skipping bail is when a person 
commits a crime in a city or a state and then tries to run away to 
another city or state before his or her court date. For many 
situations in the US and Canada, if someone commits a minor 
crime, he or she can pay some money to the court and stay 
out of jail until the court date; this money is called bail. If 
the person goes to court on the 
appointed
date, then they get 
the money back. If they miss the court appointment, then they 
lose the money and must go to jail for a longer time if they are caught 
by the police or a bounty hunter.
Many states also allow bounty hunters who have special