Bail enforcement jobs are becoming more and more popular with the recent interest in American bounty hunters. ‘Bounty Hunter’ is just another name for ‘bail enforcer’, and can also be called ‘bail agent’, ‘bail officer’, ‘fugitive recovery agent’, or ‘bail fugitive recovery specialist’. The job of the bail enforcer is to locate and capture fugitives for a monetary award. In other words, those people who skip bail need to be apprehended, and someone’s got to do the job. The bail enforcer tries to find these people, and gets rewarded, or paid, when he or she does.

Having bail enforcement jobs means that those people get to carry around a lot of really cool equipment, and all legally of course. Bail enforcers or bounty hunters usually carry handcuffs, pepper spray, tasers, bullet proof vests, flashlights, walkie talkies and, if fully trained and properly licensed, they can carry a pistol too. Aside from this paraphernalia, they also wear a lot of protective clothing that has ‘Bail Enforcement Officer’ written on it, like hats, shirts and badges. Each bail enforcing officer is different, and chooses the equipment that best works for them, although the list above is somewhat standard.

Most bail enforcement officers are employed by a bail bondsman, which means that the bounty hunter or bail enforcer gets paid a portion of the original bail paid by the fugitive. If the fugitive eludes his or her bail, the bail bondsman is responsible for paying in the rest – and this is why there is such a great demand for people to fill bail enforcement jobs, as nobody wants to pay in money that they don’t really have or owe in the first place. The bail enforcement officer is the bail bondsman’s way of making sure that the fugitive does not skip bail, and does attend his or her court trial.

Bail enforcement officers have a really good track record in the United States, and arrest some 31,500 fugitives that skip bail in a single year. That leaves less than ten percent uncaught, which is a remarkable figure according to crime records. Being one of the many that have bail enforcement jobs means that you join a part of the law that is well respected, has a great success rate, and gets to have a level of authority unmatched by most other law enforcement officers. For example, a bail enforcement officer can enter the fugitive’s home or other private property and can do so without a warrant if they are aiming to recover the fugitive there.

If you want to be in the running for one of these bail enforcement jobs, you have to have education and training in criminal justice, and at least have an undergraduate degree in Criminal Justice. Most people don’t have the time or the money to take off work and do a degree full time, so Criminal Justice Online has decided to make it that much easier for you and offer online degrees that you can do in your own time and as it suits you.