Different crimes increase your bounty by different amounts. Here is a list of crimes and respective bounty increase:


The maximum bounty you can get increase every chapter eventually capping at $1500 in the epilogue. If you are close to a settlement when a posse is formed then the posse will be made up of mostly lawmen but if your further away then they will be made up of bounty hunters.The higher the bounty the stronger the bounty posse that will come looking for you.

The disguise system in RDR2 is kinda confusing but ill do my best to summarise it

• A witness will recognise you if you are not wearing a mask regardless of what clothes/facial hair you are wearing which will result in a instant bounty
  
  
• You can continually commit crimes in the same clothes/facial hair and not get a bounty as long as the law doesn't spot you. If the law spots you a bounty will be placed on you
  
  
• If you keep committing crimes in the same cloths in an area where you got a bounty that was acquired with said clothes then eventually you will start getting instant bounties from witnesses. To counter this just switch clothes/facial hair and the bounty will not increase as long as the law doesn't spot you.
  
  
• The law will see thorough every different disguise and mask giving you an instant bounty

Basically you can commit crimes without bounty forever provided you wear a mask and the law doesn't see you. If you are spotted by the law you need to change outfit to not increase the bounty when a witness sees your crime.

The area where people will recognise you is represented with a dashed red line shown below. This is know as lock down and lawmen either arrest you or shoot on sight

• Their seems to be a bug where witnesses will still show a bright red eye icon (which is supposed to mean you will get a bounty if they reach the law) despite being in an unknown disguise. This is just a visual bug and you will not get a bounty as long as the law doesn't spot you