“In the interiorization of violence within law, reason, and the attempted knitting together of social order, a world made in common would be made in the congealing of whiteness through and as policing. From a context in which white servants often worked alongside slaves, the collective subjection of slaves was the process through which whiteness cohered—deputizing white servants to capture runaway slaves and work as part of an emerging police force. Attempted marronage of slaves was common in the early seventeenth century. Richard Ligon’s 1657 map of the island shows a European on horseback chasing two escapees in the same year that a “general hunting” day was called against fugitives. This unofficial vigilantism was in effect legislated for through the slave codes, becoming re-formed and reshaped as slave hunting in the form of white police. Ratifying a collective responsibility for whites to control and capture slaves, patrols were formed to search slave quarters, chase runaways, and watch over gatherings like markets or ceremonies.[28] The codes proposed that surveillance systems be put in place, with a registry of plantation slaves and runaways. A ticketing system was used for slaves who were sent off-plantation, with those failing to provide them whipped and their masters fined. Servants who had completed their contracts were often employed by plantation owners to catch runaway slaves. Captured slaves could be lawfully whipped, have their noses slit or faces branded, or be executed, and if a master killed an African slave in the context of punishment, then no crime was committed. Punishments for indentured servants found off-plantation were significantly reduced, while the fee for capturing an African slave was increased, with any servant capturing a runaway granted relief from all future service.”
Tia Trafford - Everything is Police (2024: 19-20)
