Book Review: Signal crimes: Social reactions to crime, disorder and control

• Author: Erin Grant
• DOI: 10.1177/1057567715583354
• Date: 01 September 2015
• Published date: 01 September 2015
• Subject Matter: Book Reviews

Innes, M. (2014).

Signal crimes: Social reactions to crime, disorder and control, Oxford, United Kingdom: Oxford University Press.

190 pp., $40.00, ISBN 978-0-19-968447-2

Reviewed by: Erin Grant, Washburn University, Topeka, KS, USA

DOI: 10.1177/1057567715583354

Signal Crimes provides a new framework for understanding how crime, disorder, and the reaction of

the criminal justice system affect the public’s perception of safety. Relying on the previous work of

Goffman and Eco, Innes proposes the use of a signal crimes perspective to understand how and why

some events lead to a greater fear of crime, while others do not.

The first three chapters are an introduction to the signal crimes perspective, defining major con-

cepts and elaborating on disorder and fear of crime. Chapters 4–6 explore reactions to crime and

disorder. Chapter 4 focuses on minor (e.g., rumors of crime) signal crimes; major events (e.g., the

events of September 11) are discussed in Chapter 5. The final chapter suggests that there are not only

signals of, but also signals to, control crime and disorder. Multiple studies are used throughout the

text to better inform the discussion.

Chapter 1 is an introduction to the signal perspective. According to Innes, a signal as a sign that

has an effect; crime and disorder, along with the criminal justice system’s reaction to them, serve as

signals to a community regarding their level of safety. Each new signal is framed by those which

have come before and alters the perception of those to come. Chapter 2 expands upon disorder,

which is defined as any disturbing or troubling breach of prevalent norms and conventions. Wilson’s

concepts of physical and social disorder are evoked, the repetition of these creating a greater sense of

harm than individual instances. Using interviews conducted in multiple neighborhoods, Innes

explores how disorder can affect groups with differing levels of intensity and a range of responses.

Though difficult to read, Chapter 3 was arguably one of the most important chapters. Within this

chapter, Innes explains methods by which fear of crime travels and creates a harm footprint. Private

harm footprints exist when crime only affects those closest to the involved parties (i.e., family and

friends). Parochial footprints are wider spread, impacting those in a limited geographic area (loca-

lized) or individuals belonging to a specific social group (distributed). When an entire community is

affected by an incident, a public harm footprint is said to exist. Innes uses homicide cases to elabo-

rate on harm footprints, including interviews with individuals from the community in which the

crimes occurred.

Gossip, rumors, and the effect these have on crime signals are the subject of Chapter 4. Innes

defines rumors as soft facts used to fill the gaps in information known about an incident. Police inad-

vertently instigate rumors by providing the public partial information, thereby permitting a commu-

nity to fill in the blanks with their perception of the situation. A police presence in an area may also

lead to rumors of crimes that have never happened. Gossip is similar to rumors but are more accu-

rate; those who spread gossip have firsthand details of the incident. These information sources are

immediate, easily spread via the Internet and other media sources, quickly affecting a community’s

sense of security. Innes suggests that these sources of soft facts can be useful, serving as cautionary

tales. Gossip and rumors can enhance social control—once community members believe crime is

occurring, their willingness to report crime increases. The negative side of this information is that

rumors and gossip can stigmatize an area.

Public response to major signal crimes, as well as the reaction of the criminal justice system fol-

lowing such incidents, are the subjects of Chapter 5. When a major incident is discovered, commu-

nities may react in alarm with a realization that major institutions were unable to protect them. This

creates a need for intuitional reform to prevent such events from happening again. The reform must

be visible to the public to create what Innes refers to as an arc of social control and an increased

Book Reviews 291