Synthetic biology has the potential to positively transform society in many application areas, including medicine. In common with all revolutionary new technologies, synthetic biology can also enable crime. Like cybercrime, that emerged following the advent of the internet, biocrime can have a significant effect on society, but may also impact on peoples' health. For example, the scale of harm caused by the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic illustrates the potential impact of future biocrime and highlights the need for prevention strategies. Systematic evidence quantifying the crime opportunities posed by synthetic biology has to date been very limited. Here, we systematically reviewed forms of crime that could be facilitated by synthetic biology with a view to informing their prevention. A total of 794 articles from four databases were extracted and a three-step screening phase resulted in 15 studies that met our threshold criterion for thematic synthesis. Within those studies, 13 exploits were identified. Of these, 46% were dependent on technologies characteristic of synthetic biology. Eight potential crime types emerged from the studies: bio-discrimination, cyber-biocrime, bio-malware, biohacking, at-home drug manufacturing, illegal gene editing, genetic blackmail, and neuro-hacking. 14 offender types were identified. For the most commonly identified offenders (>3 mentions) 40% were outsider threats. These observations suggest that synthetic biology presents substantial new offending opportunities. Moreover, that more effective engagement, such as ethical hacking, is needed now to prevent a crime harvest from developing in the future. A framework to address the synthetic biology crime landscape is proposed. When considering synthetic biology as an engineering science (Andrianantoandro et al., 2006 ), the introduction of the capability to “program” a biological system can be compared to the introduction of the internet and the capability of programming a computer. A traditional biological system could, for example, be modified to behave like a sensor that gets activated and emits a signal in the presence of a toxin or disease signature, which is useful for medical diagnostics or environmental solutions (Bhutkar, 2005 ). However, unless adequate security is designed in, the availability of these technologies has the potential to increase the opportunity for their misuse, such as the “home-brewing” of recreational drugs (Endy et al., 2015 ) or generating peoples' portraits from discarded DNA samples (Dewey-Hagborg, 2013 ). In fact, a 2019 trend report published by the UK Home Office highlighted designer psychoactive drugs and synthetic biology by amateurs as future security concerns (UK Home Office, 2019 ). Misuse is traditionally defined as illegitimate activities that are punishable by law. discuss the activities of biohackers involving (for example) them publicly injecting themselves with genetically engineered compounds (e.g., N6 gene to produce HIV antibodies, myostatin gene for muscle growth) that they have experimentally produced on their own using CRISPR/Cas technology—in unregulated premises. Kirkpatrick et al. also discuss biohackers' enterprises, namely the Odin and the Transcendence research collective. The former was founded to sell CRISPR/Cas kits for “at-home” experiments containing unregulated CRISPR/Cas constructs. The latter was founded to conduct “open clinical trials” or a means by which biohackers can test the gene therapies that they have The sophisticated projects presented at iGEM in their example could bring future risks of an amateur accidentally or purposefully creating a harmful entity (e.g., virus) using CRISPR/Cas techniques. Future crime risks 5. DIY-drugs Synthetic biology engineering involves modifying a biological system, such as bacteria, to produce a desired active ingredient that may not be produced naturally; introducing “Do-It-Yourself” (DIY) drugs. Motivated by the current commercial uptake of “biohacking as-a-service,” drug manufacturing “at-home” using genetically modified organisms was identified as a future crime risk in two studies (Wintle et al., 2017 ; Bress). Through scenario development, Bress forecasted that by 2030, synthetic biology will facilitate illicit drug abuse. The scenario developed was based on research that used genetic engineering tools to modify E. coli and yeast to produce Tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) and Lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), respectively (Endy et al., 2015 ; Luo et al., 2019 ). Bress predicted that it will be commonplace in the future for synthetic drugs to be commercially cultivated or made “at-home.” She speculated that this will be fueled by an increasing use of nootropics. Moreover, that crime opportunities will be generated by asymmetries in policies across countries (i.e., use/production will be legal in some countries but not others) that will create opportunities for drug trafficking. An analogy can be made here to the current (asymmetric) legislation regarding cannabis use in the U.S. which differs across States. Bress suggests that the production of illicit drugs using synthetic biology techniques (without having to cultivate fields of plants) would disrupt drug trafficking and economic incentives for drug manufacturers. It would, she suggests, enable the production of desired substances in a petri-dish, equipping any individual with the capability of using, producing and distributing manufactured drugs, potentially decentralizing drug trafficking. The economic benefits of using fast-growing, genetically modified microbes as drug manufacturing platforms have been a feature of conventional drug manufacture for decades. In their horizon scanning and Delphi study, Wintle et al. suggest that the manufacturing of illegal drugs using fast-growing genetically modified microorganisms (e.g., yeasts or bacteria), represent an increasingly attractive model for criminals as the barrier to entry steadily decreases.