ABSTRACT
This chapter examines a methodology for facilitating safety strategies for communities, through the lens of how this might make women safer. The methodology is a social-transformation model that follows a process and delivers a systems model (Capra, 1982) and action plans for a safe community in which opportunity abounds. The methodology specifically makes use of the ideas of safety, and its opposite, unsafety, as a conscious and calculated turn away from the idea of security, which carries with it a perceived threat or danger – and a mode of operation and thought that concerns crime, violence and criminal justice. The term unsafety is intended to convey a state in which many communities exist, where they neither feel nor are safe, most of the time. The focus on safety (and turn away from security) suggests the inclusion of a range of sources and sectors in the discussion, which and who may not be included in a conversation about security, but can contribute in meaningful ways to a discussion about safety.
