ABSTRACT
The presence and strengths of laws condemning violence against women, rates of reporting violence to authorities and the severity of penalties faced by those who commit gender-based violence (GBV) are all taken as indices of the “civilizing process” and a concomitant improvement in the lives of women and children. The logics of carceral feminism that drive this global standard of juridical-carceral responses to GBV remain persuasive in the aggregate, but continue to ignore the deep implications of mass incarceration of racialized populations in the perpetuation of GBV through the global north west while commensurately doing nothing to notably change either the epidemiology of GBV or the lived experiences of those who are victims in these same nations. There are, however, movements coming from some of the world’s most ignored places that have a great deal to teach about alternative responses to GBV that both reduce its prevalence and serve the needs of those who have survived it while removing the prison from the center of “effective” state responses.
