The article aims at the general description of the academic research that examines the fear of
crime concept after September 11, 2001, when new areas of research became a part of security
studies, substantially changing the very understanding of fear of crime. Thus, there was a
change in the academic models for examining the social perception of crime. At first, there
were some fruitful years for the sociological analysis of the fear of crime concept. Today,
sociological studies of fear of crime continue, but this concept became even more important
for criminological studies. Therefore, we analyzed the fear of crime category in the articles
published in peer-reviewed academic journals in the criminological and sociological per-
spectives (Sage, Jstor, EbscoHost, and others). The findings explain the evolution of the fear
of crime concept in the research from 2001 to 2021. For Latin America, the concept of fear
is quite recent, which is very different from other regions of the world. Moreover, the inter-
pretation of fear in Latin America is very different from both Europe and the United States.
Although Latin America and the United States have much in common, the article presents
the unique features of the Latin-American approach to this phenomenon.
