Decolonising the Traditions of Justice in Crete: Land, Harm and Repair Aóri

Through a zemiological lens, Koumentaki explores how native populations acknowledge criminality and work towards harm reduction for protecting their communities against hostility. Her focus on a mountain community in Crete reveals how a community can bypass formal penal legal processes in favour of their restorative justice practices. Honour. Violence. Revenge. Words that have cut deep in the sphere of customary justice in the Mediterranean. The subjugation of local systems of justice as 'private justice' by a Eurocentric worldview has prevailed in scholarship, establishing a hegemonic understanding of customary law. Looking to restore the legacy of justice in Crete, this groundbreaking volume deviates from fabricated concept of customary law and provides an understanding of how justice traditions are predominately restorative, instead of vengeful. Through a zemiological lens, Koumentaki explores how native populations acknowledge criminality and work towards harm reduction for protecting their communities against hostility. Her focus on a mountain community in Crete reveals how a community can bypass formal penal legal processes in favour of their restorative justice practices. Moving beyond tired narratives of honour and revenge, Koumentaki reveals a sophisticated system of harm reduction, accountability, and community-led restoration. Women emerge as hidden mediators. Shepherds enact indigenous deterrence. And a parallel justice system operates quietly beneath the drone surveillance and militarised policing of the modern Greek state. Koumentaki provides a fundamentally unique explanation of Mediterranean ‘customary law’ and revenge culture, abundant in ethnographic data and narrative intrigue. At once an intimate ethnography and a decolonial intervention, Decolonising the Traditions of Justice in Crete transforms our understanding of customary law, restorative justice, and the Souths that exist within Europe's own borders. With a profound recognition of the overlaps between local justice practices and restorative justice, this is a must-read for scholars and students interested in critical criminology, zemiology, decolonial and southern perspectives in criminology, restorative justice and ethnography.