From a non-US person, the whole Bounty system, now that is where things truly hit the Blade-Runner-esque dystopia level.

3rd party bounty hunters are a pretty rare thing. Most of the time it's the same bail bondsman who facilitates a suspects release that comes looking, since the bondsman doesn't get their money back from the court until the suspect shows.

Which is the whole point.

And that bondsman likely required the suspect to list and confirm the name, address, and phone number of every family member, employer, and close contact they have.

Probably 95% of cases are the bondsman just calling the suspect's family to get them to encourage compliance.

An angry moma is going to be more effective than any manhunt.

Not really, it’s not as if it’s an old west wanted dead or alive thing. It’s actually pretty mundane. They even made a crappy reality TV show about it.

> it's worth noting that some amount of the bail money can be converted to a bounty for the apprehension of those of the accused who go on to skip trial.

Hahaha, bounty hunting certainly makes for good movie scripts, but in practice I imagine that it's quite a bad idea.

Leave law enforcement to the police, they are already bad enough at it -- I can't imagine you want poorly trained civilians without uniform to employ violence to apprehend suspects.

What happens when a bounty hunter mistakes the identify of someone who then decides to exercise self-defense against a kidnapping attempt?

The fact that this doesn't constantly cause massive problems in a country full of guns and "stand your ground laws" is amazing :D

which might also work without bail, as incarcerating the accused would cost tax money anyway - so it doesn't work too well just as an incentive for showing up, but also doesn't hinder the accused from fleeing or destroying evidence once they do pay bail.

Using private companies for law enforcement purposes, as opposed to using accountable public employees, seems like a completely unnecessary idea. It does create a powerful lobbying industry, which makes it even harder to reform.