Mikhail Fradkov said Interior Minister Rashid Nurgaliyev will head the new commission, which will coordinate the activities of relevant departments.
Fradkov said that a total of 3,850,000 crimes were committed in Russia in 2006.
"We must work out adequate measures not only to fight crime, but to prevent it," he said.
Last Friday, Russia's interior minister highlighted growing extremism, drug trafficking and economic crimes at a meeting to review his ministry's work in 2006.
Rashid Nurgaliyev said 220 extremist groups, comprising some 10,000 members, were identified in Russia last year.
"Some youth groups have shown a tendency to switch from protests and acts of hooliganism to terrorist activities, murders and robberies," Nurgaliyev said, adding that police solved 169 race-hate crimes last year, 27% more than in 2005.
Russian and foreign human rights groups have raised concerns over growing xenophobic sentiments in the country in recent years. Assaults on dark-skinned people, including fatal attacks on foreign students, and acts of vandalism in synagogues, have become widespread across the country, as have nationalist rallies.
