Bovingdon is a safe village, and safer than the borough it belongs to by a clear margin. Its crime rate runs about a third below the Dacorum average. Burglary and violence show up, as they do everywhere, in small numbers. A prison sits inside the village boundary, and the village still comes out well. The record is calmer than the reputation of any village with a prison ought to be.
Hertfordshire Constabulary's published rate for Bovingdon is about 58 crimes per 1,000 people in the year to May 2026, roughly 36% below the Dacorum average, with 355 crimes recorded over those twelve months.
Set the two side by side and the gap is plain: about 58 per 1,000 in Bovingdon against about 90 per 1,000 across Dacorum as a whole. Most of the borough's total is made in its bigger town, and the village picks up a share of the name without much of the number.
The neighbourhood behind those figures is settled and comfortable. Bovingdon's statistical areas average about 2,780 people per square kilometre, unemployment is about 4%, and about 1% of households are overcrowded. Those describe a place of owned family houses where most people have work and room, and the crime figures match the setting.
The mix needs reading with care, because 355 crimes is a small enough total that a few incidents shift any category by several points. Violence and sexual offences make up about 43% of recorded crime here against about 35% nationally; that heading is the largest almost everywhere and covers everything from serious assault to common assault with no injury. Anti-social behaviour is about 16%, the same as the national share. "Other crime" is about 13% against about 2% nationally, the one figure that stands well apart. The Mount Prison sits inside the same boundary, and the published categories don't say which incidents happened behind its walls and which on the village's streets. Criminal damage and arson run about 8% against 7% nationally, burglary about 6% against 4%, and public order about 5% against 7%. Over a year this size, a handful of cases in either direction would redraw that list. The police's street-level crime map is worth an evening, because it shows whether the year's incidents cluster near the prison and the old airfield or near the house on the shortlist.
What happens after a crime is reported is a county question. Hertfordshire Constabulary charges a suspect in about 11% of cases, against about 12% nationally, which places it 23rd of 42 forces in England and Wales. About 40% of its cases close with no suspect identified. That figure covers the whole force and says nothing about Bovingdon in particular; it describes what to expect if a crime here does need solving, and the answer is no better than average. For a village whose loudest regular entertainment was banger racing, and which hasn't held regular races since 2008, the likelier calls involve a shed or a car.
Safety is one of Bovingdon's real strengths: a village well below its borough's rate, with a crime record that stays small even with a prison counted inside it.