Yes, and by a margin that should embarrass anyone who assumes a fishing town means trouble. Recorded crime here runs at a bit over sixty offences per thousand residents. Across Torbay as a whole it runs to more than a hundred. That does not make the place crime free, and nowhere is. It does make Brixham the calm end of the borough, which is not the story English seaside towns are usually given.
Police.uk records 1,281 offences in the town over the twelve months to May 2026, which works out at a published rate of about 62 per 1,000 residents. That sits roughly 43% below the Torbay average. Both of those are published figures calculated on statistical-area populations, so they are not the sort of thing to re-derive at the kitchen table with a calculator and a population count.
Side by side, the two numbers are the whole answer: about 62 offences per 1,000 residents in Brixham against about 109 across Torbay over the same twelve months. Same police force, same coastline, same year, and a gap that wide is not noise.
For texture, this is a densely built town rather than a scattered one, averaging around 3,970 people per square kilometre across its neighbourhoods, with unemployment at about 2% and overcrowded households at about 1% at the 2021 census. Those are descriptions of the place, not explanations of the crime rate, and anyone stitching them into a theory is doing it on their own time. What they do tell you is that the narrow streets above the harbour are close-packed without being crammed.
On the mix, violence and sexual offences make up about 48% of recorded crime here against about 35% across England and Wales. That category sounds worse than it reads: it is a broad statutory grouping that runs from serious assault down to common assault without injury, and it tops the list in almost every town in the country. Criminal damage and arson account for about 11% locally against 7% nationally. Anti-social behaviour is about 13% here against 16% nationally, public order about 6% against 7%, and other theft about 7% against a national 7%, which is to say identical. Shoplifting sits at about 4% locally against 8% nationally, which is the one number the retail trade would happily frame.
What happens after a report is a separate question from how much crime there is, and the answer belongs to the force rather than the town. Devon and Cornwall Police charge a suspect in about 8% of cases against about 12% nationally, which places them last of the 42 forces in England and Wales on that measure. About 26% of cases close with no suspect identified at all. None of that changes how safe the street outside your house is. It changes what you can realistically expect once something has already happened, and the honest version of that expectation is lower than most people carry in their heads.
Safety is where this town quietly outperforms almost everything else about it. Brixham is not a place you need to think twice about walking home in, and the numbers back the instinct rather than contradicting it.