The fear of crime refers to the fear of being a victim of crime as opposed to the actual probability of being a victim of crime. The fear of crime, along with fear of the streets and the fear of youth, is said to have been in Western culture for "time immemorial". While fear of crime can be differentiated into public feelings, thoughts and behaviors about the personal risk of criminal victimization, distinctions can also be made between the tendency to see situations as fearful, the actual experience while in those situations, and broader expressions about the cultural and social significance of crime and symbols of crime in people's neighborhoods and in their daily, symbolic lives.

Importantly, feelings, thoughts and behaviors can have a number of functional and dysfunctional effects on individual and group life, depending on actual risk and people's subjective approaches to danger. On a negative side, they can erode public health and psychological well-being; they can alter routine activities and habits; they can contribute to some places turning into ‘no-go’ areas via a withdrawal from community; and they can drain community cohesion, trust and neighborhood stability. Some degree of emotional response can be healthy: psychologists have long highlighted the fact that some degree of worry can be a problem-solving activity, motivating care and precaution, underlining the distinction between low-level anxieties that motivate caution and counter-productive worries that damage well-being.