No, not by Cornwall's standards. The recorded crime rate here runs about a third above the county's own. The village is small, so the number of offences behind that is small too, which cuts both ways when a handful of incidents moves a rate. Unemployment is low and overcrowding is low, so this is not the picture people reach for when they explain crime figures to themselves. Safety is the weakest thing on Bugle's record, and it is not close enough to average to argue about.
Police recorded 627 crimes across the area in the year to May 2026, giving a published rate of about 99 crimes per 1,000 residents. That rate sits roughly 33% above the local authority average. Both of those are published figures rather than anything worked out here, and the rate is calculated on a statistical population base rather than the resident headcount, so dividing one by the other at home will not reproduce it.
The comparison is worth seeing in full rather than as a bare adjective. Cornwall as a whole records about 74 crimes per 1,000 residents over the same twelve months. Bugle records about 99. That is the entire gap, stated plainly: a village of a few thousand people carrying a rate a quarter above the county it sits in.
The texture around those numbers is not what the figures usually imply. Population density across the area averages roughly 1,756 people per square kilometre, which is denser than the word village suggests and reflects housing packed into a compact centre rather than scattered across the clay country around it. Unemployment runs at about 3% and overcrowded households at about 3%. None of that causes anything, and it is offered as description rather than diagnosis, but it does mean the usual shorthand explanations do not fit here.
On what the crimes actually are, violence and sexual offences account for about 52% of the recorded total against roughly 35% across England and Wales. That category is the largest almost everywhere and covers a wide statutory range including common assault without injury, so it does more alarming than it should when quoted on its own, but the gap between 52% and 35% is real and worth naming. Anti-social behaviour makes up about 15% here against roughly 16% nationally, and other theft about 7% against roughly 7%, both of which are close enough to the national share to be unremarkable. Criminal damage and arson runs at about 10% against roughly 7%. Public order at about 6% and burglary at about 3% both sit slightly below the national shares. In short, the mix is broadly ordinary apart from the violence category and a mild lean toward damage.
What happens after a report is a separate question, and the answer belongs to the force rather than the village. Devon and Cornwall Police charge a suspect in about 8% of cases, against roughly 12% nationally, which places the force 42nd out of 42 forces. About 26% of cases are closed with no suspect identified at all. None of that measures how safe Bugle is, and it should not be blended with the crime rate, but it is the honest answer to the question people actually mean when they ask whether anyone gets caught.
Safety is the poorest part of Bugle's case, and the figure driving it is a rate a third above the county rather than any one category running wild. Anyone buying here should treat that as a known cost of the postcode rather than something the village will talk them out of.