The media is a part of our everyday life and is often the main source of information for a large number of people. Because of this, it is clear that the relationship between the media and society is multi-layered and very complex, so it can be said that the relationship between media and society significantly determines relations in society (Malović, 2007). The importance of the role of the media is evident in the fact that the „media comprise the most important element in defining reality for most people“ and have „a central position in distributing knowledge and what people see as crime“ (Surette, 2007:33). This paper presents, through a review of domestic and foreign literature, current theoretical and empirical knowledge on the importance of the media in presenting crime and the results of a systematic review of research published on this topic in Croatia in the period from 2000 to 2019. Searching Croatian databases (Croatian scientific bibliography (bib.irb.hr), Portal of Croatian scientific and professional journals (hrcak.srce.hr), Google Scholar and the Internet search engine Google) according to certain keywords, conducted in June 2020, found research conducted so far on the topic of media coverage of crime in the Republic of Croatia, with the aim of gaining insight into the features of media coverage of crime in Croatia. According to the author of this paper, such a systematic review of Croatian research has not yet been conducted. The systematic review included 15 studies and the framework of research on this topic has been identified, that is, two main approaches – research of media content on crime and certain forms of crime (n = 7) and research of media content on specific cases and actors and issues related to media coverage of crime (n = 8). Emphasized as the dominant focus of research is the analysis of the presentation of violent crime in the media and the issue of ethics in reporting. Most research use quantitative or a combination of quantitative and qualitative analysis (n=13) and the data are compared with official statistics or the results of other studies. As units of analysis, all studies analyze articles in the newspapers or on Internet portals, and some also analyze the content of comments on news. The key findings of the research indicate that media coverage of crime in Croatia is contrary to official statistics, that the media has a superficial approach to this topic, is inclined to sensationalism and to some extent still violates ethical principles. With the synthesis of the most important insights, given are also recommendations for further research and practice.