A bounty is a payment or reward of money to locate, capture or kill an outlaw or a wanted person. Two modern examples of bounties are the ones placed for the capture of Saddam Hussein and his sons by the United States government and Microsoft's bounty for computer virus creators. Those who make a living by pursuing bounties are known as bounty hunters.
Bounties have also been granted for other actions, such as exports under mercantilism.
Examples Historical examples Written promises of reward for the capture of or information regarding criminals go back to at least the first-century Roman Empire. Graffiti from Pompeii, a Roman city destroyed by a volcanic eruption in 79 AD, contained this message: A copper pot went missing from my shop. Anyone who returns it to me will be given 65 bronze coins (sestertii). Twenty more will be given for information leading to the capture of the thief.
A bounty system was used in the American Civil War as an incentive to increase enlistments. Unscrupulous bounty jumpers would receive a bounty, then desert.
Another bounty system was used in New South Wales to increase the number of immigrants from 1832.
Bounties were sometimes paid as rewards for killing Native Americans. In 1862, a farmer received a bounty for shooting Taoyateduta (Little Crow). In 1856, Governor Isaac Stevens put a bounty on the head of Indians from eastern Washington, for ordinary Indians and for a chief. A western Washington Indian, Patkanim, chief of the Snohomish, obligingly provided a great many heads, until the territorial auditor put a stop to the practice due to the dubious origins of the deceased.
In Australia in 1824, a bounty of of land was offered for capturing alive the Wiradjuri warrior Windradyne, the leader of the Aboriginal resistance movement in the Bathurst Wars. A week after the bounty was offered, the word "alive" was dropped from the reward notices, but he was neither captured nor betrayed by his people.
Bounties have been offered on animals deemed undesirable by particular governments or corporations. In Tasmania, the thylacine was relentlessly hunted to extinction based on such schemes. Gray wolves, too, were extirpated from much of the present United States by bounty hunters. An example of the legal sanction granted can be found in a Massachusetts Bay Colony law dated May 7, 1662: "This Court doth Order, as an encouragement to persons to destroy Woolves, That henceforth every person killing any Woolf, shall be allowed out of the Treasury of that County where such woolf was slain, Twenty shillings, and by the Town Ten shillings, and by the County Treasurer Ten shillings: which the Constable of each Town (on the sight of the ears of such Woolves being cut off) shall pay out of the next County rate, which the Treasurer shall allow."Early American Imprints, 1st series, no. 88.
17th-century examples Since after the Stuart Restoration, criminality was increasing, the dissatisfaction with the penal system led to the implementation of the rewards. £10 were promised to anyone who gave information about a robber or burglar and a pardon was also granted to convicts able to provide evidence against their accomplices.J.M. Beattie, Crime and the Courts in England, 1660–1800, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1986. . Between 1660 and 1692, Parliament introduced a series of statutes that offered rewards up to £40. Under William III, the rewards became a systematic element in the fight against crime, an alternative to erase the most dangerous threats to the community. The first example of permanent reward was in 1692, when £40 (together with the offender's horse, arms, and money) were offered for the discovery and the conviction of offenders who committed serious property crimes – highway robbery, burglary and housebreaking, coining, and other offences.J.M. Beattie, Policing and Punishment in London, 1660–1750: Urban Crime and the Limits of Terror, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2001. . The trial judges became fundamental to the administration of the rewards system because the statutes put them in charge of apportioning the reward among the persons who claimed to have participated in procuring the conviction. As it was written in the legislation of 1692, "...in case any Dispute shall happen to arise between the persons so apprehending any the said Thieves and Robbers touching their right and title to the said Reward that then the said Judge or Justices so respectively certifying as aforesaid shall in and by their said Certificate direct and appoint the said Reward to be paid unto and amongst the Parties claimeing the same in such share and proportions as to the said Judge or Justices shall seem just and reasonable"William and Mary, 1692: An Act for encourageing the apprehending of Highway Men [Chapter VIII Rot. Parl. pt. 3. nu. 3.]', in Statutes of the Realm: Volume 6, 1685–94, ed. John Raithby (s.l, 1819), pp. 390–391 http://www.british-history.ac.uk/statutes-realm/vol6/pp390-391 Retrieved November 24, 2015.
18th-century examples In the 18th century, the English government episodically offered rewards by proclamation; in 1720, a royal proclamation offered bounties for the unmasking of murderers or highway robbers, sometimes worth as much as £100. When a statutory reward overlapped a proclamation, prosecuting or convicting of a highway robber could be worth £140 a head (£100 under proclamation, £40 by statute), £240 for a pair or £420 for a three-person group. These were huge sums at the time when an artisan earned about £20 and a labourer less than £15 per year.J.H. Langbein, The Origins of Adversary Criminal Trial, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2003, p. 91. . Supplementary reward was part of the administration of the law for six years, then with the death of George I, it came to an end. After two years, in February 1728, a new proclamation reinstated the £100 reward by respecting the original terms. Private parties were also free to offer rewards in addition to rewards by proclamations, then this practice was taken up by governmental departments and local authorities. In 1716, Robert Griffith was indicted for stealing from Thomas Brooks, one silver watch, value £51, and one gold watch, value £18, from Mary Smith. She offered a reward of £15 to anyone who gave information about the robber. The reward was received by Mr. Holder, after he brought Mrs. Smith the silver watch that was stolen. In 1732, Henry Carey offered a reward of 2 guineas for the securing of Richard Marshall, and three more for his conviction. Marshall, together with Mary Horsenail and Amy Mason, were indicted for breaking and entering the house of Mr. Carey in Dorrington-street. They were also indicted for robbery. Marshall was secured by Mr. Parker, that received the 2-guinea reward as promised. Australian bushranger Ned Kelly held the most wanted bounty of the 1800s, for £8000; Ned was wanted dead or alive.
Rewards and thief-takers In creating incentives to overcome criminality, the rewards system risked overincentivizing. This led to the development of the profession of thief-taker. They were part of the criminal underworld, but they were seen as offering an advantageous service to the state.J.M. Beattie, Policing and Punishment in London, 1660–1750: Urban Crime and the Limits of Terror, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2001, p. 55. Victims of theft in London, facilitated by the circulation of newspapers, took advantage of advertising to recover their stolen goods. They offered a reward "with no questions asked".T. Hitchcock and R. Shoemaker, Tales from the Hanging Court, London, Bloomsbury Academic, 2007, p. 3. . Since prosecutors usually resorted to the legal system, they had to pay for the proceedings at the Old Bailey; though the offender was convicted, they often lost their goods forever. For this reason, prosecutors decided to bypass the legal system, recovering their goods by resorting to advertising.T. Hitchcock and R. Shoemaker, Tales from the Hanging Court, London, Bloomsbury Academic, 2007, p. 2. Thief-takers were the perfect intermediates between victims and offenders and received a portion of the reward offered. Jonathan Wild, a prominent figure of the underworld, successfully combined thief-taking with the activity of simplifying the return of stolen goods by paying rewards to the thieves.T. Hitchcock and R. Shoemaker, Tales from the Hanging Court, London, Bloomsbury Academic, 2007, p. 17. In the early 1720s, he controlled London's underworld, but his activity became a threat to the community and the integrity of the penal system. In 1725, Wild was accused of stealing 50 yards (46 m) of lace, valued at £40, from the shop of a blind woman, Catherine Statham. He admitted accepting a reward of 10 guineas from Mrs. Statham for helping her to recover the stolen lace. He was acquitted of the first charge but with Mrs. Statham's evidence presented against him on the second charge he was convicted and sentenced to death.
Fictional representations The figure of Jonathan Wild inspired the character of Mr. Peachum in The Beggar's Opera, a satirical ballad opera in three acts written in 1728 by John Gay. Peachum controls a large group of thieves, and is connected to the government and courts. Because of these connections, he can decide whether to allow a captured criminal to be hanged (in that case he receives a reward) or to be released. In scene II, Peachum gives evidence against another member of his gang, Tom Gagg, in exchange for a reward of £40. Then in scene IV, Mrs. Peachum, Peachum's wife, enters and inquires about Bob Booty, her favorite member of the gang. Peachum will accept a £40 reward for allowing Bob to be hanged.E.V. Roberts, The Beggar's Opera by John Gay, Lincoln, University of Nebraska Press, 1969.
Steve McQueen played bounty hunter Josh Randall in the Western television series Wanted Dead or Alive (1958–1961).
The Star Wars universe features many bounty hunters, with the most famous examples being Boba Fett and Din Djarin.
Two films directed by Quentin Tarantino, Django Unchained and The Hateful Eight, focus on the stories of bounty hunters in the United States in the mid to late 1800s.
21st-century examples The majority of prisoners held in Guantánamo Bay detainment camp were handed over by bounty hunters.
The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston offered a $5 million reward for the return, in good condition, of the 13 works of art taken from its galleries in March 1990.
Other uses
Mathematics The term "bounty" is used in mathematics to refer to a reward offered to any person willing to take on an open problem. Bounties are offered for solving a particular math problem – ranging from small lemmas that graduate students solve in their spare time to some of the world's hardest math problems. Paul Erdős was famous for offering mathematical bounties.
Economics In economics the term "bounty" has often been used in the sense of a negative tax."A tax may be taken as representative of those changes which may cause a general increase, and a bounty as representative of those which may cause a general diminution in the normal supply price." – Alfred Marshall, Principles of Economics (1890 and many subsequent editions), V.XIII.4. "All of the action necessary to achieve a given ethical desideratum may take the form of lump sum taxes or bounties." – P. A. Samuelson, Foundations of Economic Analysis (1947), p. 245.