Artificial intelligence is increasingly used to support public safety by predicting events, uncovering patterns, and informing decisions. In Latin America, where crime burdens are high and data systems are heterogeneous, a region-focused synthesis is needed to assess progress, identify gaps, and clarify operational implications. Accordingly, this PRISMA-guided, multilingual (English, Spanish, and Portuguese) bibliometric review synthesizes 146 peer-reviewed journal articles (2010–October 2025) to examine trends, methods, and application domains. Since 2018, publication output accelerated, peaking in 2024–2025. Regionally, Brazil leads within a multi-hub co-authorship network linking Latin American nodes to the United States and Spain; additional hubs include Colombia, Chile, Mexico, Ecuador, and Peru. Methodologically, three motifs dominate: temporal-dependence modeling; ensemble learners with cost-sensitive decision rules; and multimodal integration of remote sensing and computer vision with administrative data. At the application level, four families prevail: utility and fiscal-fraud analytics; environmental offenses with temporal modeling; cyber and platform-based analytics; and sensing, geospatial, and forensic workflows. However, evaluation practices are heterogeneous, with frequent risks of spatial or temporal leakage; moreover, reporting on fairness, accountability, and transparency is limited. In order to support responsible scaling, research directions include interoperable data governance, leakage-controlled and cost-sensitive evaluation, domain adaptation that accounts for spatial dependence, open and auditable benchmarks, and broader regional participation. To our knowledge, this review is one of the first multilingual, region-centered syntheses of artificial intelligence and crime in Latin America, and it establishes a reproducible baseline and an actionable evidence map that enable comparable, leakage-controlled evaluation and inform research, funding, and public safety policy in the region.