Distinct Places to Address Intimate Partner Violence

Abstract

The concept of place can be used to address intimate partner violence (IPV). Place, to geographers, is a concept that helps explain how human experiences shape a sense of meaning surrounding locations. Using a grounded theory approach and qualitative interviews with service providers, we present a case study exploring how Brantford social service agencies apply placemaking strategies and take advantage of the elements of place to reduce the harm associated with IPV. Six themes arose in the interviews. Home, the women’s shelter, courts, and schools were found to represent unique areas where placemaking strategies help to reduce harm. Hair salons emerged as a unique place to reach victims, whereas prison was a place that encouraged offenders to make changes. These themes show the concept of place has the potential to add insights into how IPV can be reduced and the traumas facing victims addressed.

Keywords

domestic violence criminology violent offenders intervention/treatment

Introduction

Intimate partner violence (IPV) is defined as

any type of physical or sexual assault, physical threat, threats with weapons, deprivation of liberty, psychological and emotional abuse, and stalking perpetrated against legally married or common-law partners, girlfriends, or female dating partners, whether the relationships are intact or estranged. (Johnson & Dawson, 2011, p. 4)

This definition of IPV includes physical incidents and nonphysical incidents perpetrated against female partners, regardless of the relationship status. This definition focuses attention on women who experience a disproportionate amount of IPV (Johnson & Dawson, 2011). IPV incidents typically occur in the home, be it a single-family house, apartment, condo, townhouse, or some other dwelling type. Regardless of the form it takes, home is a place packed with meaning for the inhabitants (Mah, 2012; Mallett, 2004). When IPV occurs in a space, like the home, it adds to the sense of meaning victims and offenders feel when in that place.

When criminologists think of place, they tend to focus on a point on a map or small geographic area like a parking lot. For example, in an introduction to a special issue on crime and place in the Journal of Research in Crime & Delinquency, Maxfield (2011) says,

In the strictest topological sense of the word, a place has no spatial extent; it is an X-Y coordinate that is a point in space. In practice, criminologists have expanded this definition to include very small spaces such as buildings, intersections, street segments, and special use areas. (p. 4)

Eck (2002) in the book chapter “Preventing Crime at Places in Evidence-Based Crime Prevention” uses a similar definition of place to explain his prevention focus:

A place is a small area reserved for a narrow range of functions, often controlled by a single owner, and separated from the surrounding area. By “small” we mean that a location is smaller than a neighborhood. Often a person standing anywhere within a place can see or hear activities in any other part of the place . . . Places include stores, homes, apartment buildings, street corners, subway stations and airports. (p. 241)

In contrast, geographers would typically define a point on a map or a building as a micro-level space (Brantingham & Brantingham, 1981). A neighborhood would be considered a meso-level space and the city as a whole a macro-level space (Brantingham & Brantingham, 1981).

Place, to geographers, “are all spaces which people have made meaningful” (Cresswell, 2004, p. 7). Place refers to bounded space (Matthews & Herbert, 2008) which is shaped and transformed by people (Pred, 1985). Geographers’ exploration of place, therefore, focuses on place as the “practices as well as affective experiences” (Gieseking, Mangold, Katz, Low, & Saegert, 2014, p. xx) of a physical space. A place can include concepts such as a neighborhood, a city, a state or province, or a country. Place is more than the physical boundaries of a space; it also includes the practices and customs of the people living and interacting with an area (Gieseking et al., 2014).

Place, as defined by geographers, provides a broad theoretical framework that can help expand how the world is understood. While at an abstract level the conceptualization of place can be difficult to understand, specific examples can demonstrate the power of the concept. For instance, Anderson (1987) uses the concept of place to demonstrate how “Chinatown” was created as a social construct in Vancouver, British Columbia, in the late 1800s and early 1900s. The actions taken by the city government ensured that Chinese immigrants would cluster together, and by not providing adequate services, the city worsened existing stereotypes and prejudices. Anderson thus demonstrates the usefulness of place as an academic tool. She shows that place can be used to illuminate the relationship between institutional actions, societal perceptions, and meso-level spaces.

In a more recent example, Mah (2012) connects urban decline associated with factory closures in three communities to the concept of place. In her wide-ranging book, Mah shows that the job losses people immediately experience are amplified by their attachment to their geographic communities. The closures are then felt for decades after they occur, even among those who find new employment, as they change the way people live their day-to-day lives. The closures reshape the physical landscape creating short-term challenge but the potential for opportunities in the long term. Mah (2012) describes this all using the concept of place. Places also have a special attraction for people. They lead to attachments and become more than just a physical space through a process described as place attachment:

Place attachment is the symbolic relationship formed by people giving culturally shared emotional/affective meanings to a particular space or piece of land that provides the basis for the individual’s and group’s understanding of and relation to the environment. (Low, 1992, p. 165)

People are attracted to the physical properties of a micro-space as well as the “interpersonal, community and cultural relationships” (Low & Altman, 1992, p. 7) occurring there. Mah’s treatment of home and place attachment is particularly noteworthy to this study. She found people who lived in communities facing significant factor closures felt a sense of “devastation, but also home” (p. 171). The homes in these communities were still places they were proud to have built and associated with memories, but there was also a strong understanding of what was lost. Residents were aware of the decline and higher levels of poverty being experienced within these areas, but they still remained attached to their homes for nostalgic reasons. The attachment people have to micro-level spaces, like the home, creates opportunities to shape them into places to address issues such as IPV.

A significant body of research examines the geography of IPV at the meso-level. Within neighborhoods, the cluster of economic disadvantages (e.g., a high presence of low-income families, single-parent-headed households, unemployment) is associated with higher rates of IPV (Benson, Fox, DeMaris, & Van Wyk, 2003; Gracia, López-Quílez, Marco, Lladosa, & Lila, 2014; Kiss et al., 2012). The literature is not clear if the clustering of economic strain directly causes IPV or if economic strain simply places victims of IPV in close proximity to one another (Kiss et al., 2012). Within neighborhoods, it is also possible that economic factors correlate with attitudes toward gender roles. Flood and Pease (2009) find attitudes toward gender roles are strong predictors of the condoning of IPV, which in turn can create conditions that perpetuate IPV.

St. Jean (2007) connects the meso-level to the micro-level showing that interventions by neighbors can help reduce IPV, but if neighbors are unwilling to intervene it will not cause IPV. For IPV to occur, an offender is required:

Over time, collective action can encourage disruptive family members to moderate their domestic behavior, but the lack of such action is not the primary cause of those crimes. They are instead rooted in unresolved interpersonal conflict and private quests aimed at establishing domination over others. (St Jean, 2007, p. 193)

St. Jean (2007) stresses the importance of the micro-level by showing that it is offenders present in an individual home that leads to IPV. Community actions can assist in these circumstances, but absent an offender, no action is needed.

This article will explore how social service agencies in Brantford, Ontario, use the specific elements of different places to address IPV and how these agencies use placemaking approaches to create safe spaces for victims. Placemaking approaches can take many forms. Cresswell (2004), for example, cites a number of examples. “Homeowners redecorate, build additions, manicure the lawn. Neighbourhood organizations put pressure on people to tidy their yards; city governments legislate for new buildings to express the spire of particular places” (Cresswell, 2004, p. 5). These examples include action at Brantingham and Brantingham’s (1981) micro-level (the home), meso-level (neighborhoods), and macro-level (city-wide efforts). In this article, a number of approaches to addressing IPV within micro-level spaces will be discussed.

Brantford is located in southwestern Ontario about an hour drive southwest of Toronto. Brantford has a population of 98,179 (Statistics Canada, 2016). Many social service agencies in Brantford also provide services to the surrounding county of Brant County, with a population of 36,707. Some of Brantford also sits on a Six Nations reserve, which is primarily located just southeast of the city. Brantford was selected as a research location for this case study as it has the highest rates of family violence in southern Ontario (Burczycka & Conroy, 2016).

Method

This study takes a grounded theory approach to explore how social service agencies use place to address IPV. Grounded theory is an approach to research where a theory is extracted from the experiences of research participants (Glaser, 1992; Glaser & Straus, 1967; Straus & Corbin, 1990). Instead of a verification of an existing theory, grounded theory allows the research participants to share their experiences for the purposes of theory creation (Glaser, 1992; Glaser & Straus, 1967; Straus & Corbin, 1990). The approach is ideally suited to situations where little theoretical work has been previously completed (Glaser & Straus, 1967). The study of how place can be used to address IPV is thus ideally suited, as the research team could find no specific studies exploring this topic.

Using a grounded theory approach the focus is on theoretical sampling. Thus, instead of focusing on a random sample of participants, the researcher focuses on sampling ideas by purposefully including participants with different perspectives on the issues discussed. Sampling continues until participants do not yield new ideas, referred to as theoretical saturation (Glaser, 1992; Straus & Corbin, 1990; Glaser & Straus, 1967). In qualitative studies, themes begin to emerge typically after six interviews, and theoretical saturation is typically reached within 12 interviews (Guest, Bunce, & Johnson, 2006).

Participants to this study were recruited through cold-calling and emailing employees at social service agencies that deal directly with incidents of IPV in the Brantford, Brant County, and Six Nations, including government departments and nonprofit sector organizations. Semi-structured interviews were held with 12 employees. Although the intent was to conduct individual interviews, two organizations indicated they preferred to have their employees participate in a group interview. To accommodate this, two interviews were actually group interviews involving four employees and three employees, respectively. Participants held various roles, including direct service roles and management positions. Interview questions explored the participants’ work experiences, the role their agencies played in addressing IPV, and the characteristics of victims and offenders. The original interview guide contained six questions with some anticipated probes:

What do you and your agency do to work with victims/offenders of interpersonal violence?

As you may be aware Brantford has one of the highest rates of IPV in Ontario, what do you think explains this higher than average rate of IPV in Brantford?

Are there any common characteristics you see among victims/offenders of IPV? Probes: Their geography within the city? Their sociodemographics? Their age? Other characteristics?

Some of my background research on the city of Brantford suggests there are some historical events that may have affected the development of the city in ways related to IPV. Are there any historical developments in Brantford that you think may be related to the higher rates of IPV today? Probes: The closure of the Massey Ferguson Plant, the Mohawk Institute Residential School in Brantford, the opening of Casino Brantford.

What is working to prevent IPV in Brantford?

What do you think should be done to further reduce IPV in Brantford?

Consistent with a grounded theory approach, from the first interview probes were adapted mid-interview to explore in more detail topics that research participants shared. This included introducing participants to the emergent themes from earlier interviews and asking for feedback. The insights from these discussions proved to be extremely useful in selecting the final themes. All but one interview was audio recorded and transcribed. For the one participant who asked not to be recorded, detailed notes were taken by the interviewer. Results of all interviews were analyzed with an open coding scheme (Glaser, 1992) using Dedoose, a software system designed for analyzing qualitative data and collaborating online.

Open coding was conducted by the lead author on Dedoose. Field notes of the interviewer’s thoughts and potential themes were created following each interview. The transcriber also offered input following transcription on what they perceived as key themes. These themes were used as the initial coding scheme. Coding began midway through the interviews. Two potential themes included in these initial themes were removed after specifically asking questions related to these themes in later interviews. These later interviews provided clarification, and these themes were seen as encompassed within larger themes. The initial interviews were then rereviewed following the completion of the final interviews.

Results

A total of six themes for addressing IPV emerged within six distinct places: home, the women’s shelter, prison, hair salons, courts, and schools, as discussed in detail in the sections below. Each of these themes demonstrated different approaches to using place to address IPV. Home, the women’s shelter, courts, and schools demonstrated approaches to placemaking where social service agencies attempt to change a place to improve its characteristics to prevent harm to victims from IPV. Hair salons were used as an area where social service agencies took advantage of the unique elements of place to assist victims. Prison, similarly, was an area where social service agencies used the elements of a place to reach offenders.

Home

The home for many people is the place “where you can be yourself” (Cresswell, 2004, p. 24). It is often described as a refuge (Mallett, 2004) or an intimate space (Cresswell, 2004). In contrast, the participants in this study spoke of home as a place where violence is common. For instance, one participant stated, “Violence in [the] home is normal or automatic reaction,” whereas another stated that in some houses violence “is super normalized in the home.” A participant who worked with youth explained that violence in the home has a long negative impact on children as well, creating a cycle of violence, stating,

I have never seen a client or offender where the parents have been together for 30 years and it’s been a healthy environment. Those kids don’t come. I don’t get them with domestic violence charges; sometimes stealing and drugs and stuff like that.

It is against this backdrop that participants described the work social service agencies in Brantford are doing to try to change the home environment to create a safe space for victims. This is done by working with both the offenders and the victims.

Participants described a number of strategies that are being used to eliminate recidivism with offenders to eliminate violence in the home. These strategies were typically taught to offenders in group programming or occasionally in one-on-one sessions. For instance, one participant described what they tried to teach clients to do when faced with a domestic situation and that when they got angry, instead of resorting to violence they should to do things like

taking a walk, removing yourself from the situation, writing down your feelings, calling a friend and venting, calling your parents if you have a close relationship, just getting the anger out and then discussing when cooler heads prevail.

Ultimately, by teaching offenders to avoid falling into the same traps that led them to violence, it was hoped that in future IPV would be reduced in the homes of Brantford.

Participants also reported that their social service agency was also working with victims. Participants recognized that not everyone who faces IPV could leave or even would want to leave the situation. In addition, even if they do leave, there is always the possibility that their current partner could return to the home to cause problems or that their next partner would perpetrate IPV as well. Participants also described strategies they taught to victims of IPV to make the space safer for victims. For example, one participant described very specific strategies they taught to victims:

If they are returning to their home or their abusive partner, helping them stay safe in that environment . . . being aware of your exits and what rooms you are in if things are escalating, being prepared to leave quickly, so knowing the resources, always having a cell phone, always having a bag packed, talking to the kids a little bit on what might happen and how to get help if they are feeling afraid.

By teaching the victims strategies like this, participants hoped to create a home environment where victims felt safe. In this way, the home could become a place of safety and refuge.

Women’s Shelter

People often experience a strong attachment to where they live due to the bonds they experience with their neighbors and community (Fried, 2000; Gustafson, 2001). For many people, the bonds associated with home are such that leaving would be accompanied by an extreme sense of loss:

It is a disruption in that sense of continuity which is ordinarily a taken-for-granted framework for functioning in a universe which has temporal, social, and spatial dimensions. From this point of view, the loss of an important place represents a change in a potentially significant component of the experience of continuity. (Fried, 1963, p. 163)

It is not hard to imagine that individuals fleeing a home to avoid IPV will experience similar feelings of loss and disruptions to their lives. Participants explained that the social service sector in Brantford recognizes these challenges and attempts to mitigate these disruptions by creating a shelter system that is welcoming, safe, and supportive of recovery.

Keeping in mind the goal to create a safe environment for women, the women’s shelter in Brantford grew into a one-stop shop for services for victims of IPV. Participants described the women’s shelter extensive services, which include services for women victims of IPV and their families, a 24-hr crisis line, eight units of transitional housing, and services for homeless women.

Women visit the women’s shelter for a variety of reasons, as was described by a participant:

The shelter provides emergency shelter, safe space for people who are needing protection or if it is not that extreme just some support to leave their relationship or take a break from it depending on what is happening.

Notice, this explanation allows for the possibility that women may return to their relationship or may decide to leave permanently. This approach of nonjudgemental support in a safe space leads into the two key points surrounding the shelter theme.

Within the women’s shelter, there are two major goals described by interview participants. The first was to help women stay safe from their abusive partners and to feel safe. The second goal was to aid in recovery. The women’s shelter excels at both of these goals through a placemaking approach.

Participants explained that the women’s shelter takes the safety of the women and children in its care very seriously. The shelter has an elaborate security system and a number of protocols to ensure women feel safe. Indeed, in one interview it was explained that the women’s shelter is “more secure than the police station.” One participant described the security approach in more detail:

[The women’s shelter has] quite an extensive security system . . . cameras all over the building, you can’t walk into [the women’s shelter] . . . [the women’s shelter] staff often do safety planning individually but also as a group . . . whether its personal safety, internet safety, just general safety.

The second part of the women’s shelter theme explains how the shelter creates a place that can aid in recovery:

[The shelter staff] try to make the shelter feel as home-like as possible, so everybody has their own bedroom, some share a bathroom, their doors are coded so not anyone can walk into their room so their belongings are safe . . . [the shelter has] a house cook who prepares dinner and tries to have that piece of the home feel . . . really just try to make it as comfortable as possible . . . [staff] try to connect with the women . . . how they are feeling . . . encourage families to continue with their routines, helping them figure out how they are going to get through their morning, get to school all that kind of stuff.

This description provides an overview of the approach the women’s shelter takes to supporting victims. In addition, it was explained that the women are given their own room within the shelter, a space that they can be alone within or with just their families. The women are also provided with services to support recovery.

The services at the shelter take a multifaceted trauma-informed approach. The shelter takes in women facing a variety of issues with a variety of different goals. Staff at the women’s shelter are prepared to deal with many different issues facing the women and are open to supporting the women in an approach that respects their wishes:

A lot of [shelter] clients are coming in after experiencing domestic violence but also experiencing other issues like mental health, addiction, parenting stuff, just anything and everything really . . . [the shelter helps] them connect with supports that can support . . . trying to move them through the shelter to a life free of [the shelter]. So, whether that’s going back to their original home, maybe they are working together with their partner to fix their relationship or make it more healthy, maybe they are going to move independently or move in with family, [The women’s shelter] support whatever it is that they are wanting to do, and some people stay one day some people stay 3, 4, 5 months it just kind of depends on what their needs are and how they are doing in the shelter.

Notice that the services provided here are focused on assisting the women in a nonjudgemental and supportive manner.

The children are also given their own specific services. These services are led by trained professionals as described by a participant: “[The shelter has] children’s program which is kind of its own entity working with moms who are living in the shelter and their children . . . [with] ECEs [early childhood educators] and the youth workers.” Ultimately, these services are designed to help the entire family grow and prepare to leave the shelter, as was also described:

Up in the shelter . . . [there is]lot of work around self-growth and life skill and helping the families up there kind of learn or relearn the skills they need to start over, and once they are ready to move on from here.

The focus on the family unit was described further in another interview:

The family is assigned a case manager, who is one of the shelter workers who help them figure out a plan, set some goals, navigate the system whatever it is they are wanting really.

By allowing women to focus on self-growth, the women’s shelter is trying to create a place specifically suited for recovery.

The efforts to create a safe space and give the women in the shelter a sense of ownership are perceived to be working. One participant put this sentiment succinctly, stating that the shelter “it’s kind of their own space.” Despite the stated effectiveness of the shelter itself, it is difficult to support women if they are unable to receive services in the shelter.

The women’s shelter faces space challenges, and often the shelter is at or near capacity, creating challenges for the agencies when they have victims in immediate need:

The shelter is always full, it is hard to get a client into the shelter because they just don’t have enough beds and you know really the last couple of months if you had to look outside the community most of southwestern Ontario the shelters have been full like it’s a struggle to find a bed for somebody to get into a shelter.

Fortunately, if a woman reaches out for support, the women’s shelter has the ability to place women in motels or other shelters on a temporary basis to assist women leaving situations involving IPV. Unfortunately, follow-up questions about motels and other temporary accommodations for women and children were not asked. Future research may wish to explore how the experiences of clients in these spaces differed from those residing in the shelter.

Hair Salons

Discussion with participants in the study revealed a program in Brantford that takes advantage of the unique nature of hair salons. Participants explained that the shelter and other social service agencies also face challenges associated with reaching everyone who is facing IPV. According to participants, social service agencies in Brantford realized that women feel comfortable in hair salons. They also realized that hair salons are places that are dominated by women, where men seldom go and where they likely do not feel welcome to go. To take advantage of the unique benefits offered by these places, Brantford introduces the Hairspray program. The program was described by one participant as follows:

The Hairspray program which is working with the salons and making sure we have info in there for women in a discrete way because that’s often one place that their partners don’t go with them is when they are going to get their hair done and they tend to talk to their hairdressers about a lot of stuff and an opportunity to provide them with information they might not otherwise be available.

The Hairspray program thus takes advantage of the benefits of hair salons as a place to use them to reach women who may be facing IPV. One of the advantages of these places is that women feel comfortable talking and sharing their experiences. Another interview described how the Hair Spray program staff operate:

[The Hairspray program staff are] getting out into hairdressing salons and educating the staff about warning signs around domestic violence I guess it has been found that a lot of women talk quite openly with their hairdressers and that is a place that they feel safe and comfortable and sometimes their reaching out and they don’t realize it and the hairdresser or the person doesn’t always recognize what it is they are needing . . . we have expanded it out to nails, esthetics, and to train the employees on how to respond to that and how to refer without causing more harm.

Hair salons are places uniquely suited to supporting victims of IPV and aiding them in reaching services. The absence of males and the natural inclination in these places to speak openly created an environment where disclosures of IPV can naturally occur. According to participants, the Hairspray program took advantage of this reality and is providing training to hairdressers to encourage them to provide a type of triage support and make referrals to the appropriate agencies.

Prison

Brantford service providers also described using the unique elements associated with prison, a place specifically suited to the service providers’ advantage, to reach offenders of IPV. The prison was a challenging environment for the offenders. Immediately after being arrested, the accused exhibited many different behaviors according to an interview: “anything from compliant to combative to suicidal.” Participants explained that they sometimes had difficulty encouraging offenders to change, but the prison was a different environment. One participant explained this difference simply, stating, “jail offenders don’t like at all—Don’t take probation seriously.” Participants report that the discomfort and emotional distress offenders felt in jail make it an ideal place to reach out and encourage them to try and stop committing IPV:

I have been to jail to see some of our guys, while they are awaiting their charges, that is something I wish we would get to do more of I mean out funding is very limited for that kind of work but I mean it is kind of a valuable thing, because you see someone when they are incarcerated, and it it’s the most vulnerable you will ever see that person at that time where they are willing to listen and hear you at that time, I wish we got to do that more but that’s something that we have got to do a little bit here.

Unfortunately, this is a place that also represents a lost opportunity. While prison can be ideally suited for reaching some offenders and encouraging them to make changes, participants explained that lack of resources within the nonprofit sector means social service agencies are not often able to reach offenders when they are in prison. Correctional institutions themselves may be able to offer programming either directly or in partnership with nonprofit organizations to take advantage of the motivation to change that can be felt when initially arriving in prison.

In designing and implementing programming, it is important to ensure the program is effective. Feder and Wilson (2005), for example, conduct a meta-analysis raising concerns about the ability of many court-mandated programs for offenders of IPV to reduce recidivism rates. If programs are implemented within prisons or are mandated through the court process, it is important that they be subject to high-quality evaluations.

Court

The legal process often requires offenders and victims of IPV to attend court. Within Brantford, there are three types of court housed in two buildings that victims and offenders may end up visiting:

There’s the provincial courthouse, there is the superior which is federal law, and there is the criminal court law, which is diverted to the provincial courthouse which is a different legal system than family.

Each of the courthouses represents places where conflicts can occur, which can be harmful to victims of IPV. Whether in court for a criminal case or dealing with divorce proceedings involving child custody, the court process itself can lead to trauma for victims. This has led the social service sector to provide supports: “We [Non-Profit] support court for women and families that are meeting in either family court or criminal court.” Despite this assistance, being in court can lead women to feel unsafe:

Conflict happens is in the court system, we spend a lot of time at the court system and our judges will tell you it’s fairly unsafe because you have both sides in that building plus family members and once domestic violence happens a lot of the issues and problems become legal.

So in addition to providing support to address the emotional needs of victims, the courthouses have taken steps to ensure the safety of women in the courthouses. For example, “the courts have really done a lot in Brantford to try to make it more secure, they have checks when you come through.” The courts also provide help to ensure the safety of women around the courthouse. For example, “security has walked people back to their cars after hearings and those kinds of things just to help protect.” These steps are being taken to address the reality associated with the courthouses as a place associated with conflict. The court process means women can often feel vulnerable and unsafe. Indeed, the presence of their offender may mean they are actually unsafe in the space. The social service sector and justice system appear to have recognized these challenges and taken steps to protect women and address the emotional challenges of being in the courthouse.

Schools

The final theme for addressing IPV was schools. Schools emerged as places where the children of victims of IPV often exhibited signs of the trauma they were experiencing. A participant described how they try and help the school recognize and understand the behaviors being exhibited by children:

Sometimes we have to help them move a school or advocate with the teacher and principal around safety or just understanding behavior abnormalities that kind of stuff so people from our children’s program will actually go to the school with mom to support talking to the teacher or helping the school system understand the behaviours that the children are exhibiting, due to the impact [of witnessing IPV].

By helping schools understand how children are experiencing the impact of IPV, the social service agencies hope to create a school environment where students can process the trauma they are undergoing.

The school system was also an emergent area for the social service sector where they saw opportunities to do more work. Recently, they had begun working on new preventive programming, as was described in one interview:

We’re trying to do more in the school system, some preventative stuff and just info sharing about what kind of to look for and how domestic violence and impact these kids and their families so that’s just kind of getting off the ground, like the hires are just happening now so I’m sure that will grow into its own.

According to participants, the schools also represent a place with the opportunity to support prevention. Research supports this belief, as studies show the children of victims of IPV can become offenders or victims themselves (Flood & Pease, 2009; Johnson & Dawson, 2011). Implementing prevention programming in schools can turn these into environments that can support breaking the cycle of violence.

Flood, Fergus, and Heenan (2009) suggest programming in schools should meet five criteria: “1. a whole-school approach, 2. a program framework and logic, 3. Effective curriculum delivery, 4. Relevant, inclusive and culturally sensitive practice, 5. Impact evaluation” (p. 23). To encompass a whole-school approach, this requires alignment of curriculum, supportive school policies, the creation of an appropriate school culture, and partnerships between the school, the home, and the community agencies. The Solving the Jigsaw program from the Loddon Mallee region in Victoria, Australia, is particularly relevant. This program focuses on addressing the impact of IPV on upper primary school children and early secondary school students (Flood et al., 2009).

Conclusion

The concept of place has the potential to add insights into how IPV can be reduced and the traumas facing victims addressed. Previous research has not specifically addressed this perspective, making a grounded theory using a case study an ideal approach to gleaning insights into how place and IPV are related. Six unique themes were discovered relating distinct places to addressing IPV in Brantford: home, the women’s shelter, prison, hair salons, courts, and schools. Despite these results being based on a single case study, with the exception of the innovative work being done in hair salons, the themes are likely to be repeated in most cities as courts, homes, schools, prisons, and shelters are common elements of the criminal justice and social service sectors.

A single case study in one city does face limitations. First, it is possible the case study can be a unique perspective not indicative of how other areas address the issues. As noted, this is most likely applicable to the theme of hair salons. However, this may be a programming area that other cities should consider exploring. Notably, the most major gap in this research project is the lack of a perspective from indigenous organizations. The research team made more than 40 attempts (emails and phone call) to reach out to various indigenous service providers within Brantford. Unfortunately, the nonprofit sector in general and indigenous organizations, in particular, is facing significant resource challenges, and sitting for an interview with scholars is not always possible given the sector’s main priority is helping clients. Future researchers should specifically examine the relationship between place and IPV from an indigenous perspective to add further insights.

This study’s treatment of diversity represents another limitation. The study participants represented the social service sector and spoke primarily about their general experiences. These individuals may not have been direct victims or offenders of IPV, and as such could not reflect on the diversity of experiences individuals who are victims of IPV encounter (no specific questions were asked about past personal experiences with IPV). The generalizing of themes may also obscure the differences some small subsets of the population face. Brantford faces challenges addressing IPV among male victims, members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) community, and some immigrant communities. However, the lack of interviews with these victims and offenders from these communities makes it impossible to understand whether additional or different themes may exist for these groups.

The interviews were also not conducted as originally intended. The initial plan was to conduct individual interviews until theoretical saturation was reached. However, two organizations requested group interviews. While the interviewer felt these interviews were an open dialogue, it is possible some of the participants felt reluctant to share information in front of their colleagues.

Despite these limitations, the study was able to garner some informative insights into how the social service sector in Brantford is using the unique elements of places and placemaking to support victims and attempt to reduce incidents of IPV. Within the home of victims, participants explained how their agencies used placemaking approaches to try to create a safe space for victims that also felt safe to them. These approaches focused on interventions with offenders to attempt to reduce the likelihood that they would reoffend and to teach victims strategies to employ if they were faced with future situations of IPV.

For victims who chose to leave the home and enter the women’s shelter, placemaking was used to create an environment where the former victims were safe and felt safe. The creation of a place of safety allowed victims and their families to embark on a journey of recovery. Before women could access services, like the women’s shelter, they needed to be reached and informed of the services available. The Hairspray program took advantage of the way place is experienced by women in hair salons to inform women of the services available within the community. Hair salons are predominately occupied by women, and hairdressers engage in open conversation with their clients, creating a comfortable environment for disclosure of IPV.

The discomfort offenders feel while in jail made prison an ideal place to reach out to some perpetrators of IPV and encourage them to access services. Social service agencies attempted to do this; unfortunately, resource limitations meant it was not always possible. Another justice system environment, the courthouse, was also a theme of the research. Within the court, setting conflict occurs creating an environment where victims experienced trauma and safety concerns. The social service sector and justice system attempted both to address the trauma victims were feeling and to provide mechanisms to ensure their safety. Finally, the school was a place where children who witnessed IPV would act on the trauma they were undergoing. Here the social service sector worked with school systems to provide mechanisms for students to process their experiences and ultimately break the cycle of violence often associated with IPV.

The interventions described in this study primarily focused on microsystem factors, things like address male violence directly or dealing with males’ dominance within the home and some specific personal history factors, namely childhood witnessing of violence (Johnson & Dawson, 2011). Effectively addressing IPV requires interventions at all four levels, in addition to the first two levels of personal factors and the microsystem. The third level, exosystem factors, involving economic circumstances and delinquency of peers and the fourth level, macrosystem factors, involving cultural values also warrant action when designing a society-wide effective strategy to address IPV. Exosystem and macrosystem factors were not major focus areas of the interviewees as they are primarily focused on addressing IPV directly with victims and offenders.

Place, as understood by geographers, represents an important opportunity for criminologists and practitioners wishing to address IPV. Criminologists and geographers can assist practitioners to look beyond the concentration of IPV in micro-level spaces and help to construct theoretical models explaining how place contributes to IPV. Practitioners may find place is a particularly powerful tool for addressing macrosystem issues related to culture and community values. Academics can further aid innovation by mobilizing knowledge around opportunities to use place, which are not yet being realized. Programming for offenders of IPV recently arrested and in prison represents a potential starting point, arising from this study. Researchers can evaluate and disseminate programs that take advantage of place, such as the Brantford Hairspray program.

Practitioners do not consider place explicitly in the same manner as geographers. Most people do not typically go through their days thinking about unpacking the meaning associated with a given location. However, when prompted, this study showed that practitioners are actively using the unique elements of specific spaces to reduce, prevent, and address IPV. Helping practitioners understand how they conceptualize and utilize place can encourage further innovations.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This research was supported through a 2017 Graduate Research Grant from The Royal Canadian Geographical Society.

ORCID iD

Anthony Piscitelli

Author Biographies

Anthony Piscitelli is a professor of public service in the School of Liberal Studies at Conestoga College Institute of Technology & Advanced Learning and a doctoral candidate in the department of geography and environmental studies at Wilfrid Laurier University. His doctoral research focuses primarily upon the geography of crime and victimization. He is an associate with the Laurier Institute for the Study of Public Opinion and Policy (www.lispop.ca) and the Centre for the Study of Social and Legal Responses to Violence ().

Sean Doherty is professor of geography and environmental studies at Wilfrid Laurier University. His research focuses on human activity patterns and decision making, including tracking methods, modeling, and the impacts on health, safety, and the environment. His current projects involve application of smartphone-based tracking systems to the study of diabetes, elderly cognition, disabled children, park visitor experience, and food literacy.

Stephanie Francis is a master’s candidate in the department of geography and environmental studies at Wilfrid Laurier University, focusing on environmental policy. She holds a postgraduate certificate in environmental monitoring and impact assessment and is currently employed as a lands and waters technical specialist with the Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry.

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