I was in an Anarchy system earlier doing some piracy - great fun - but I earned less money than 'honest' bounty hunting. It seems the more fun you have, the less you earn! lol. I'm near Duwaredari [Anarchy]. It has Federal space two jumps away and it's on the 'edge' of Empirical space.
Great places to rake in bounties are at Nav Beacons or Resource Extraction Sites. If you see the asteroid belts in your navigation window, you can always head there too. You'll get NPCs mining those areas.
I just managed to rake in over 100,000Cr in Imperial bounties [Entirely in Empirical space, just cashed it in], 30,000 Alliance bounties [from Anarchy space] and 30,000Cr Fed bounty [about half was Anarchy, the rest was from the Empire system]. I got blown up before I could cash in my previous 20,000 Alliance and 30,000 Fed bounties.. Else I'd have 60,000+50,000 bounties still to cash in! It's going to be agony having to travel all the way up to Alliance space, again. I might wait until it's around 200,000 before heading up.
For piracy.. That's easy! Find Anarchy space!
Goto the Nav beacons for pure bounty hunting; you might get away with light piracy here, if you need to just grab and dash for ammo and repairs as well. You
will need your KWS there though, since everyone will appear
Clean. Hanging around at resource extraction sites in Anarchy systems is good place to pirate NPC miners and collect bounties at the same time. Duwaredari doesn't have a RES, but it has some asteroids near the Nav Beacon. I wouldn't recommend pirating at Nav Beacons though, since pirates will come in and scan you - And then attack you for your goodies! I only really pirate when pulling guys out of Supercruise... Speaking of Supercruise. When in Anarchy systems interdicting people will net you quite a chunk of cash. Just pull a trading ship out of space, KWS them and attack the cargo-hold or launch limpets at it. You'll always get a great haul + the odd bounty.
In anarchy space, whilst in SC, you may be pulled out of SC yourself - Normally by Asps... Just submit, and make sure you have your KWS assigned to a fire key and just keep blasting - That's what I do in those situations. Asps usually have around 20-30K~ bounty [with KWS] on their heads!
If you're doing the interdicting, then Orcas sometimes have bounties [usually around 20-30K]. Type-6/7/9 - As always, these big cash-hows have tons upon tons of cargo. They're great target practice in Anarchy space as well and go down pretty easy, most have bounties too. A good way I've found is just to attack them as soon as you've hauled them out of SC and target their cargo hold [sub-system] and/or launch limpets.
I've actually had some NPCs just stop and jettison all of their cargo, right after shooting at their cargo hold [AI script parameters?]. I don't know but it saved me a lot of hassle.. Then I could just blow them to hell!
