A&E Television - Dog the Bounty Hunter

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Bail bondsman: a person who guarantees bail for prisoners, usually charging them a 10% nonrefundable deposit, and who is responsible for paying bail if they flee
Bail enforcement agent: another term for bounty hunter
Bounty: money paid for the return of a criminal, typically ten to twenty percent of the total bail bond
Custodian: term for a person put up for bail instead of money (under old British and pre-constitutional American law) who could be punished - even hanged - in the accused's place if he fled
Eighth Amendment: Constitutional Amendment that guarantees the accused the right to reasonable bail
FTA: failure-to-appear, the technical term for skipping out on bail
Fugitive: from the latin fugere, meaning "to flee," the word has been with us since Middle English, but could vanish at any moment
Fugitive recovery agent: another term for bounty hunter
Harvey, Domino: daughter of English actor Laurence Harvey, who left her privileged background to become a Los Angeles bounty hunter; she died of drug overdose in 2005, shortly after being portrayed by Kiera Knightley in the film of her life
Illinois: the only state where bounty hunting is not allowed at all, and where a bond agent of another state may not operate even with a warrant
Judas: bounty hunter slang for a person who feels wronged by the accused (often because they put up the collateral for the skipped bail) and is willing to rat them out
Midnight run: bounty hunter slang for an easy capture, which also lent its name to a 1988 film starring Robert De Niro
NABEA: the National Association of Bail Enforcement Agents, a group that provides services and legislative advocacy for the bounty hunter community
1984 Bail Reform Act: act allowing courts to hold prisoners without bail if they are too dangerous to release
Power of attorney: what a bounty hunter must acquire from a bail bondsman (which was signed over to him by the prisoner) before hunting down an accused
Responsibility Act of 1999: a failed congressional bill that sought to impose on bounty hunters the same civil rights restrictions that apply to police
Skips: informal term for people who fail to make their court dates
Skiptracing: the act of tracking someone down, usually through indirect methods such as hiring investigators or outsourcing to debt collectors
Taylor v. Taintor: an 1873 Supreme Court case often cited as having established that a bounty hunter has greater rights than a normal police officer, such as to enter a house without a warrant, or to apprehend a fugitive without reading him his Miranda rights