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How You Start is How You Finish? The Slave Patrol and Jim Crow Origins of Policing (www.americanbar.org)

submitted 2 years ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Though history books may say otherwise, policing in the United States has its roots in the slave patrols in the South. The institution of policing, and the larger justice system, must reconcile its past in order to evolve away from its racist roots.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 years ago (6 children)

There has been police ever since there has been a State, so for tens of thousands of years that we know of. Pretending that something didn't exist for 99% of its own history just to call it racist is silly.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 years ago (5 children)

So, I just read the article.

Which line of it "pretends" policing didn't exist before the American South?

Because I'm not seeing what you're claiming.

[–] BombOmOm 6 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (4 children)

The first line: "Jim Crow Origins of Policing"

Police and law enforcement have existed ever since laws existed. We have millennia of history of policing before Jim Crow came into being. Jim Crow demonstrably is not the origin of policing.

[–] Boogiepop 11 points 2 years ago

Jim Crow is used as a descriptor of a specific kind of policing. You seem to read this in bad faith, and that's making you misunderstand what it's saying.

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