Signal crime
Signal crime is a concept coined by Professor Martin Innes and Professor Nigel Fielding, aiming "to capture the social semiotic processes by which particular types of criminal and disorderly conduct have a disproportionate impact upon fear of crime." The concept was created to aid a policing approach being trialled in the early 2000s by Surrey Police called reassurance policing, which aims to identify "signals", and involve the community in solving community-related problems and is the ascendent to the current 'neighbourhood policing' approach in England and Wales. This approach was developed in order to close the 'reassurance gap' – the paradoxical situation in which the public's 'fear of crime' (as measured by the Crime Survey for England and Wales – previously called the British Crime Survey) does not change in tandem with the overall crime rate.