Doing Crime Prevention, Doing Gender: Canadian Women’s Responses to Police-Produced Gendered Crime-Prevention Messaging

Abstract

Abstract Drawing on focus group and interview data, this paper examines how race and social class intersect with gender to inform Canadian women’s responses to police-produced gendered crime-prevention messaging. I position women’s enactments of institutionally endorsed crime-prevention strategies as a resource for the successful achievement of femininity, and I consider how intersecting social statuses shape how women do crime prevention. Focus group dialogue reveals three orientations to police crime-prevention messaging: resentment, pragmatism and gratitude. Across orientations, women strategically enact state imperatives to meet their own agentic ends. By identifying crime prevention as a resource for achieving femininity and highlighting racialized and classed dimensions in women’s gender performances, this research enriches extant literature on crime prevention and femininities.