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Comment by ticviking | Hacker News Reader

> I think it's a distinction worth posting about since policing as an institution got its start in union busting and slave catching.

Do you happen to have a good citation for this, I've heard it several times but am not familiar with any scholarship documenting that connection.

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slave_patrol

https://plsonline.eku.edu/insidelook/brief-history-slavery-a...

That Wikipedia article doesn't draw any connection between modern policing and the slave patrols, though it points out the well documented connections between militia efforts and enforcing slavery. Similar institutions date to the Romans[1], which would suggest that slave catchers and the like may not be directly linked to our idea of a municipal police department.

The second source seem to support the connection, but doesn't document any actual institutional connections. It relies on similarity, and bald assertion. The existence of overlap between the KKK and local law enforcement is evidence that policing in the US is racist. It isn't actually evidence that the institutions of policing were descended from slave patrols.

I'm not a huge expert on criminal justice, but my degree is history, and these kinds of assertions seem to ignore the parallel developments in NYC, Boston, and other Yankee cities in policing and crime solving that established our idea of a municipal police department. That such departments may have been racist isn't a surprise, virtually every institution in 1880 was, but they were in states that did not practice slavery(abolished in 1799 in NY) and as a result had no institutional history of enforcing it.

Consider that Federal Marshals were so reluctant to enforce laws on the return of escaped slaves that it took an act of congress, with severe financial penalties, to get them to actually enforce the "property claims" of southerners.

1 - http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ancient/romans/slavery_01.shtml

I think for the assertion to be true one would have to qualify it to something like 'policing as we know it today, and especially in America'. One book I've read and can recommend is Kristian Williams' _Our Enemies in Blue: Policing and Power in America_:

http://libgen.io/book/index.php?md5=9D2D33DF1F3616A04B72F4D4...

Definitely longer than I've had time to read overnight, but interesting, and it looks like it may cover the claims of union busting. Though I thought that part of the reason the Pinkerton's thrived is that many police forces wouldn't engage in anti-union activities.

it’s pure ideology. law enforcing bodies have existed in every complex civilization regardless of slavery.

Correct. For the strict purpose of protecting private property, something which slaves were considered to be. Thank you for agreeing with the historical facts.

Or the common good, or providing the weak a champion to resist violence had no role in the establishment of institutional policing?

David Friedman has a great summary of how a variety of societies pursue justice and the origins of our own system and comparisons of the systems.

http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Academic/Course_Pages/legal_sy...

Ehh I totally buy the plausibility of there being a connection between the institutions of policing and enforcement of slavery, particularly in the context of the antebellum US system, and reconstruction period.

What I find striking is that GP doesn't have facts at hand.

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