The Long Arm of the Law

 You've seen it before. Adventurers get into a scrape, raise bloody hell and pile into their ship to never return to the planet they shot up. Traveller and other games portray space travel as expensive, often dangerous. Does it pay to pay Cr 24,000 minimum, Cr 8,000 to send an officer 1 pc, 16,000 to bring him and a prisoner back, to find a culprit and bring them to trial? Would you even send one officer or a pat or a squad?

A lot of the time, no. Capital crimes require some pursuit of course, the posting of rewards and such. If the act was done against say organized crime, they might spare no expense for revenge. They have a reputation to keep. Crimes resulting in damages are easy to account for. You pass the cost onto the next ship to pass through. Make them pay with fines and fees for security checks on crew. 

Most traders do not want to put up with this crap. Worse, giving off worlders a bad name might taint all traders and interfere with trade. This is especially true when the fugitives are wanted for capital crimes. 

So, while traders do not take guff from planetary governments past a certain point, they also police their own. To catch a thief you must set a thief against him. To catch a trader, use another trader, or several!

Traders have no real legal power. Their efforts amount to two approaches. First they can simply inform on the traders who committed the crime. It is unpleasant to be a narc but sometimes you need to daw a line and take a stand. 

Also this lets the law officers get shot at if things go south. They get paid for that. Your crew does not.

The second way involves approaching the fugitives and demanding they make reparations for their actions. This could be money or surrendering the culprit for trial. If this go south, you and your crew could be fired on. Your crew doesn't get paid for that. 

Traders may have to deal with fugitives who are too powerful or dangerous to challenge. If the law is not interested in off world affairs, traders can censure one of their own. Simply put the means you receive not one bit of help from your brethren. Even your distress call will be ignored. You will not receive tips or warnings when you enter a system. Marketing data will not be exchanged. Factors on planet will be disinclined to deal with you. At worst, all the things they do to governments in the linked post will be used till they stop these goons. 

Giving bounty hunters a cheap passage is another way to help the law out. Perhaps you only charge them for life support bills, perhaps you give them working passage. They also get paid to be shot at. Meanwhile, they can handle public relations and be your complaint department. This may also involve being shot at, but again, you're paying them for that with discounted passage.

Obviously some share of the bounty could go to a captain who is a shrewd negotiator. In fact a captain could run a bounty hunter express, reducing cost of passage in exchange for shares of rewards or at least delaying payment for passage until the quarry (or a quarry) is brought in.