Reclaiming Justice

Abstract

Abstract This chapter expands on the idea of justice by examining the relationship between the state, the family, and the notions of justice through two specific frameworks. The first is through the phenomenon of “missing women,” wherein the police actively seek and “return” women to their violent families from whom they have escaped. The second is through the institutionalization of informal women’s courts, which have been used by collectives to create pathways to alternate forms of justice more amenable to women. In comparing these two practices—one that circumvents justice and the other that provides alternatives—the manner is revisited in which criminalization and codification of violence fossilizes only certain forms of violence, thereby restricting the ways by which larger frameworks of justice can cater to, draw from, and are informed by what women want.