Preventive Criminal Investigation: Epistemological Construction of a Transdisciplinary Construct for Educational Settings

This article develops an epistemological construction of Preventive Criminal Investigation (PCI) as an autonomous conceptual category aimed at educational settings. It starts with the recognition of a structural limitation shared by criminal investigation, criminalistics, and classical criminology: their intervention is generally activated only after a crime has been committed, which restricts their preventive scope. In response to this limitation, the study sought to construct and epistemologically justify a category capable of shifting attention from post-crime reaction to the anticipation of risk factors and vulnerabilities within educational institutions. Methodologically, a systematic scoping review of literature published between 2015 and 2026 was conducted in Scopus, Web of Science, ERIC, SciELO, Google Scholar, Dialnet, and DOAJ. From 109 initial records, 20 studies met the inclusion criteria and were examined through a comparative analysis between the traditional reactive paradigm and the proposed preventive paradigm. Findings reveal that the term Preventive Criminal Investigation does not appear as an autonomous conceptual category in the reviewed literature, thereby confirming an epistemological gap. Drawing on the convergence of criminology, intelligence-led proactive policing, complex thinking, and transdisciplinarity, PCI is proposed as a transdisciplinary, prospective, and systematic process through which the professional police officer diagnoses, deconstructs, and mitigates vulnerability factors and criminal risk dynamics before harm is consummated. The study concludes that this construct represents a substantive epistemological reconfiguration rather than a mere temporal extension of reactive investigation. Its implications are significant for police training, school safety, and the design of preventive public policies in Latin America, while also opening a specific agenda for future empirical validation and institutional application.