French reforms softened slave punishment while still enforcing slavery itself.

Evidence

The regulations still clearly were meant to enforce slavery. Up to fifty lashes of the whip were allowed to punish slaves; maroons were still to be punished by being branded (though no longer, presumably, with a fleur-de-lis) and having their ears sliced off. But they also included some articles aimed at encouraging insurgents to return to their plantations, promising amnesty to those who left their camps. — Dubois, Laurent, Avengers of the New World_ The Story of…, 535

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The layering of reform-brutality—complaint channels alongside fifty lashes and ear-slitting—captures the contradictory equilibrium of revolutionary slavery, worth sitting with.