An urgent task of criminological science is to create an effective crime prevention system. The main purpose of this article is to identify the problems that hinder the progressive development and organization of an effective state crime prevention system. The concepts of "prevention" and "prevention" of crime are semantically close, but not identical. The existing system of preventive measures is not a crime prevention system and is not able to fully eliminate the existing causes of crime. Crime prevention is an activity or a system of criminological measures that involves the implementation of a set of criminological measures aimed at combating crime by completely or partially eliminating the existing set of underlying causes, factors, conditions and circumstances that contribute to the emergence and development of crime.