Toward a gendered Second Generation CPTED for preventing woman abuse in rural communities

Abstract

Informed by several studies of woman abuse in rural settings, the main objective of this paper is to discuss how key principles of Second Generation Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED) can be applied to help design appropriate community-based prevention strategies for improving the security of women living in rural places from abuse by spouses and partners in both ongoing and terminated relationships. The gender-sensitive version of CPTED recognizes that communities are contested places where differing strands of values, norms, beliefs and tolerance for crime influence the security of rural women. Hence, some forms of social organization or collective efficacy (not social disorganization) may promote and condone rural woman abuse, and other forms serve to prevent and deter it. We propose a Second Generation CPTED framework that considers the utilization of four main strategies, each tailored to directly address feminist concerns and enhance a locality's collective efficacy to increase women's security: community culture; connectivity and pro-feminist masculinity; community threshold and social cohesion.