Crime prevention strategies for crime rate reduction: A bibliometric analysis.

Crime prevention is a cornerstone for sustainably reducing crime rates. This study conducted a comprehensive bibliometric analysis of 1,349 Scopus-indexed documents (1973-2025) on crime prevention strategies, using VOSviewer and Bibliometrix. Findings reveal a 7.69% annual growth, low international collaboration (17.35%), and a focus on descriptive and victimological studies. Supported strategies include community policing, safe urbanism, youth mentoring, social skills education, recidivist monitoring, and spatio-temporal crime analysis, complemented by digital risk awareness campaigns. Key gaps include thematic fragmentation, scarce longitudinal designs, and overemphasis on descriptive research. The analysis highlights dispersed authorship (90.5% with one document) and editorial concentration in violence-focused journals. The study underscores the need to integrate situational and psychosocial factors, enhance global collaboration, and prioritize rigorous intervention evaluations to design culturally adapted, evidence-based public policies for sustainable crime reduction.