The bureau examined 34,831 felony defendants who were released in May 1992 in the nation’s 75 largest counties. Jumping bail is not uncommon, according to a recent study conducted by the Department of Justice’s Bureau of Justice Statistics. (Five ski-masked intruders, who falsely claimed later to be bounty hunters, shot and killed the young couple in a botched robbery attempt.) But there’s plenty of bounty hunting to go around in Texas, particularly because the state-with its wide-open spaces and easy access to Mexico-is enticing to fugitives. No reliable data exist on how many bounty hunters are currently operating in Texas or nationwide, since bounty hunters are largely unregulated-a fact that caused much outrage during the clamor in September over an Arizona couple’s murder. So who do you think looks harder to find that person, them or me?” We don’t get paid a bounty every time we put a crook in jail-they do. “Oftentimes bounty hunters will put in ten times as much effort into locating an individual than we will because they want their money. Dees of the Houston Police Department’s fugitive detail. “We have tons and tons of felony offenders-let alone misdemeanor offenders-who we don’t have the time to locate and arrest,” says Officer J.
Bondsmen depend heavily on accomplished bounty hunters (McCollum says that so far this year she has saved them $481,800), as do the police, who don’t have the manpower to track down and bring in every bail jumper.
When a defendant jumps bail, not only is the bondsman’s money at stake but so is his livelihood bondsmen whose clients regularly disappear will quickly go out of business, because insurance companies will refuse to underwrite their bonds. Unless the bounty hunter can track down the defendant, the court will cash the bond and the bondsman must ante up. But they all serve the same function: to scour their turf, and sometimes the rest of Texas and beyond, for “skips,” or bail jumpers, who must be arrested and taken back to court.Ī bounty hunter is hired by a bondsman when a defendant who was previously released on a bail bond does not appear on his scheduled court date. Nowadays bounty hunters also like to call themselves more-respectable names-skip tracers, recovery agents, fugitive finders, or bail enforcement agents. Unlike the days when crude Wanted: Dead or Alive posters put a price on any scofflaw’s head-making the murder of an outlaw just as lucrative as his capture-modern-day bounty hunters must deliver fugitives to justice rather than take justice into their own hands. The fact that McCollom uses her modem as often as her handcuffs is not the only way her job differs from that of her nineteenth-century counterparts. “I’m just an old hunting dog you don’t want to have snapping at your heels,” she says.
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She uses age-old methods-knocking on doors and visiting old haunts (“Nobody has ten true friends,” she says)-as well as cutting-edge technology-accessing comprehensive online databases (“You have to find the weak link in the chain”) and tapping away on her PC until she finds a current address and license plate number.
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“She is without a doubt the best recovery agent in the city of Houston,” says Tina Lyles, the owner of Jailbusters Bonding Company, one of the largest bail-bonding companies in the city.įifteen years later, McCollom, 41, knows how to find people who don’t want to be found. She plays it pretty well too, locating 125 to 175 fugitives a year-a recovery rate of roughly 85 percent, which makes her one of the most coveted bounty hunters in Harris County. With a faded rose tattoo on her right arm, mirrored sunglasses, and hulking wrestler’s stance, McCollom looks the part. I’d rather go into the worst neighborhood after the biggest, baddest man than go after a little bitty female.”Īgainst the backdrop of the city’s urban sprawl, McCollom is the unlikely inheritor of a mythic, distinctly male role: the bounty hunter. She didn’t get nowhere, but, goddam, I hate chasing women. She was scratching me, clawing me, raising hell-even popped my partner in the eye. “I thought this lady was going to be a piece of cake, but she tried to run on us. “I’m sorry you missed this one, sweetheart,” McCollom says in her raspy, two-pack-a-day voice, lighting up a Kool. But don’t tell McCollom this isn’t the Wild West. This isn’t a western-it’s modern-day, air-conditioned Houston. It’s well past high noon on a sweltering summer day as McCollom sits down to a glass of lemonade at her favorite watering hole and recounts her morning spent capturing another outlaw.
WITH HER PAGER ON ONE HIP and her cell phone on the other, Janis McCollom swaggers like a gunfighter through the glass doors of Hooters, past the regulars drinking cold beer at the bar and into the cool interior.