Safety audit

Safety audit

The safety audit is a citizen participation method originally designed by the Metropolitan Action Committee on Violence Against Women and Children (METRAC) in Toronto, striving for building womens’ skills and making their communities safer. Women’s safety audits are an internationally acknowledged practice that help equip women and communities to identify what kind of corrective measures are needed to improve personal safety in urban settings.

Among other methods to determine security/legal/ethics aspects in planning of public spaces, safety audits encourage local and context-specific solutions to issues of insecurity, and promote partnerships and joint solutions between residents and their local governments.

Process description

Usually, a safety audit starts with a group of residents, and possibly other community members, who meet and discuss spaces in their community that feel unsafe. Safety audit groups generally work best when members are diverse and therefore represent a variety of safety concerns (i.e. younger and older participants, disabled, different ethnic backgrounds). Unsafe spaces might include a shopping centre parking lot, a pathway between residences, a water source, or a public housing development. After the safety audit group has chosen an unsafe space, they go together to that space and note the factors or characteristics that they think make it unsafe.

How does it support in planning of secure public spaces?

• Identification of factors/spots/spaces evoking unsafe feelings (characteristics that make a space feel unsafe might include poor lighting, negative graffiti messages, or an isolated location);
• Extensive audit checklist [last access: 2012-08-16].

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