Yes, and not marginally. Recorded crime here runs a long way below the district average. The place is built up rather than scattered, and almost nobody in it is out of work. There is very little here for anyone to do that would trouble a police officer. The reassuring version of the answer and the honest version happen to be the same one.
Police.uk recorded 177 crimes across the area in the twelve months to May 2026, which works out at a published rate of about 24 per thousand residents. That sits roughly 58% below the New Forest average. Both of those are published figures rather than anything worked out here, and the rate uses its own statistical population base, so it should not be checked by dividing the count by the number of people living in the village.
The comparison is worth seeing with both numbers on the table. The New Forest as a whole records about 57 crimes per thousand residents over the same twelve months. Barton on Sea records about 24. That is a gap large enough that no amount of caveating about small areas and rounding makes it disappear.
The texture behind those numbers is a settled, built-up coastal village rather than open countryside. Population density averages around 2,730 people per square kilometre, which is proper village-with-streets density rather than farmland. Unemployment sits at about 1%, and about 1% of households are overcrowded. None of that causes the crime figures, but it does describe the kind of place producing them.
The mix needs handling carefully, because 177 crimes across 13 categories is a small base and a handful of incidents moves any share by several points. With that firmly in mind: violence and sexual offences account for about 42% of recorded crime, against roughly 35% across England and Wales. That category is a broad statutory grouping covering everything from serious assault to common assault without injury, and it is the largest category almost everywhere, so a raw share tells you far less than it appears to. Criminal damage and arson runs at about 9% locally against 7% nationally, shoplifting at 9% against 8%, and other theft at 8% against 7%. Those three are close enough to the national shares to be unremarkable. The one genuine outlier goes the other way: anti-social behaviour makes up about 8% of recorded crime here against roughly 16% nationally. Public order sits at about 5% against 7%. None of this should be read as a fixed characteristic of the area, because at these volumes the mix is one bad fortnight away from looking different.
What happens after a report is a separate question, and it has a less flattering answer. Hampshire Constabulary charges a suspect in about 9% of cases against roughly 12% nationally, which places the force 38th of 42 forces. About 35% of cases are closed with no suspect identified at all. That is a force-wide figure, not a Barton on Sea one, and it says nothing about how safe the village is. It answers the different question people actually ask after a break-in, which is whether anyone will be caught, and the answer is that the odds are not good anywhere and are slightly worse here.
Safety is the single strongest thing this area has going for it. Buy here and the thing most likely to cost you money is the cliff, the heating bill or the market, and none of those are a matter for the police.