Yes, and the gap is not a rounding error. Around 31 recorded crimes per thousand residents a year. The Dorset figure is roughly 55. One hundred and fifty-four offences across the whole village in twelve months, which is fewer than a mid-sized town gets through in a fortnight. If you are moving here from anywhere with a high street worth policing, the adjustment will be to how little happens.
The published rate for Alderholt runs to about 31 crimes per thousand residents over the twelve months to May 2026, which sits roughly 44 percent below the Dorset average. That is a figure calculated on the statistical-area population the police use rather than a headcount of the village, so it is not something to check with a calculator and a census page. The underlying volume over that year was 154 recorded offences. Both numbers are published as they stand, and both point the same way.
Set the two rates side by side and the point makes itself: roughly 31 per thousand here against roughly 55 across Dorset as a whole. Dorset is not a violent county. Alderholt is quiet by the standards of somewhere already quiet, which is the sort of comparison that sounds like faint praise until you have lived somewhere it does not apply.
The texture behind the number is unremarkable in the useful sense. Unemployment sits at around 1 percent and overcrowded households at around 1 percent, both about as low as those measures go. Density across the neighbourhood statistical areas averages roughly 2,400 people per square kilometre, which reflects that the housing is clustered in the village rather than scattered across the parish. None of this is offered as a cause of anything. It is a description of a settled, low-churn place, and settled low-churn places tend to generate short crime reports.
The mix needs handling carefully, because with 154 offences in a year a single busy week rearranges the chart. On the police.uk categories, violence and sexual offences accounted for about 29 percent of recorded crime here against about 35 percent nationally, which makes Alderholt slightly below the national share on the largest category almost everywhere. That grouping is broad and statutory, covering common assault without injury as well as far more serious matters, so a bare percentage tells you very little on its own. Anti-social behaviour came in at about 16 percent, identical to the national share. Criminal damage and arson ran at about 16 percent against about 7 percent nationally, and burglary at about 14 percent against about 4 percent. Other theft was about 10 percent against about 7, and vehicle crime about 7 percent against about 5. The property-crime lean is the one thing worth noting, and even that is a handful of incidents rather than a settled characteristic of the village. Read it as a shape, not a verdict.
What happens after a report is a separate question from how much crime there is, and the two get blended constantly. Dorset Police charge a suspect in about 14 percent of cases, against about 12 percent nationally, which places the force twelfth out of the 42 in England and Wales over the twelve months to May 2026. Around 35 percent of cases close with nobody identified. Those are force-wide figures covering the whole of Dorset, and they carry no signal about any particular village. They are the honest answer to "will they catch them", and the honest answer is often not, though marginally less often here than most places.
Safety is the strongest thing Alderholt has going for it, and it is not a close-run competition with anything else on this page. A crime rate this far below an already low county average is the sort of number that quietly justifies the drive to everywhere.