Safety Talk:

In the present political climates of Western democracies, the `criminology of the self' (Garland, 1996) dominates crime prevention literature. What this means for women, in effect, is that we are asked (and expected) to see the ordinary as risky. This article argues that conventional analyses of women's risk of violence, and `fear of crime' overlooks the effective self-regulation inherent in women's strategies of safekeeping. Women's safety talk demonstrates that men's violence operates as a `technology' of regulating the `self'.