Rafe Logan would never be allowed to "ride up front" with the U.S. Marshal. Dangerous criminals are never just carried in the front passenger's seat of a police car like an ordinary citizen; they are transported inside a caged-in temporary cell in a prisoner-van, or at least in the safety-grill-partitioned rear seat of a police cruiser with no door handles on the back doors.
When the Dukes are using the bolt-cutters to clip off the handcuffs, the cuffs are much looser than they would normally be to "reliably" stay on the buys' wrists. Obviously this partial opening of the cuffs had to be done so that the cuff-bands would be far enough from the actors' injurable wrists to allow safe operation of the bolt-cutters.
Any employer would do a background check on a potential employee before hiring them. Boss Hogg did not do that when he hired Linda Mae.