By Timothy Hsiao

Critics of American policing often make the claim that it is a direct descendant of antebellum slave patrols, the mostly voluntary groups organized to capture runaway slaves and stifle slave rebellions in the early eighteenth century. Consider just a few examples:

• “The origins of modern-day policing can be traced back to the ‘Slave Patrol.’” — NAACP

• “Policing itself started out as slave patrols. We know that.” — Rep. James Clyburn.

• “Slave patrols . . . morphed directly into police.” — Nikole HannahJones.

• “[M]odernized police actually emerged in the South during slavery— they literally were slave catchers.” — Scalawag Magazine.

Even pro-law enforcement organizations such as the National Law Enforcement Memorial and Museum in Washington, D.C. have come to accept this claim. According to one criminal justice textbook, it is “widely recognized that law enforcement in the 20th-century South evolved directly from these 18th and 19th-century slave patrols.”

While it is true that slave patrols were a form of American law enforcement that existed alongside other forms of law enforcement, the claim that American policing “traces back” to, “started out” as, or “evolved directly from,” slave patrols, or that slave patrols “morphed directly into” policing, is false. This widespread pernicious myth falsely asserts a causal relationship between slave patrols and policing and intimates that modern policing carries on a legacy of gross injustice. There is no evidence for either postulate.

In order to demonstrate causation, one must show that modern policing drew its distinctive practices and structure from slave patrols. But the evidence shows that American law enforcement—whether in the form of sheriffs, town watches, constables, or police—all emerged from distinctly English influences. Both slave patrols and modern police departments drew from these influences. The fact that the latter did so after the former does not mean that the latter emerged from the former.

New York: National Association of Scholars, 2023. 6p.

By Smita Premchander, V. Prameela and M. Chidambaranatha

Millions of South Asian women, men and children are bonded to their employers, working for little or no wages because their earnings are retained in part or full to repay an outstanding loan. Many still work in agriculture, although bonded labourers are increasingly found in other sectors, including mining, brick making, textiles and domestic service. The victims of bonded labour tend to be drawn from the poorest and least educated segments of the population, from low castes and religious minorities – those who are vulnerable, excluded and voiceless. Bondage often begins when a worker takes a loan or salary advance from his or her employer to pay for a large expense, perhaps a religious ceremony, a wedding or a medical bill. Or the advance may come from a labour contractor who finds employment for migrant workers in distant areas. Then the debtor, and frequently other family members, is obliged to work for the employer or contractor for reduced wages until the debt is repaid. Additional loans are taken out to meet essential needs and the debt mounts, creating a perpetual cycle of over‐indebtedness and exploitation. Ever larger debts strengthen the employer’s control to the point where basic freedoms are denied to the whole household; the debt can even be passed down to the next generation.

Geneva, SWIT: International Labour Organization, 2014. 78p.

By Yunus Raudah Mohd, Pauline Oosterhoff, Charity Jensen, Nicola Pocock and Francis Somerwell

This Emerging Evidence Report describes the availability of evidence on modern slavery interventions in Myanmar presented in the programme's interactive Evidence Map. This report on Myanmar uses the same methodology and complements the evidence map on interventions to tackle trafficking, child and forced labour in South Asia for Nepal, India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. The Evidence Map provides an outline of where evidence is concentrated and where it is missing by mapping out existing and ongoing impact evaluations and observational studies exploring different types of modern slavery interventions and outcomes for specific target populations (survivors, employers, landlords, service providers, criminal justice officials) and at different levels (individual, community, state). It also identifies key ‘gaps’ in evidence. Both the Evidence Map and this report foremost target the UK Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) and its partners in the CLARISSA research programme to support evidence-informed policymaking on innovations to reduce the worst forms of child labour. We hope that it is also useful to academics and practitioner

Brighton, UK: Institute of Development Studies, 2020. 60p.