Yes, in the unremarkable way most small inland towns are. Recorded crime sits a little below the Cornwall average rather than comfortably beneath it. Around 430 offences across a year, in a town where a fair share of the population is over fifty. Nothing in the numbers suggests a place with a problem. The number worth your attention is not how much gets reported here, it is what happens afterwards.
In the twelve months to May 2026, police.uk recorded 431 crimes across the area, giving a published rate of about 72 per thousand residents. That sits roughly 3% below the local authority average. Both figures are published as they stand, and the rate uses its own statistical population base rather than the resident count, so checking one against the other with a calculator produces a different and wrong answer.
The comparison is more useful with both numbers in view. Cornwall as a whole runs at about 74 recorded crimes per thousand residents over the same period. Callington runs at about 72. That is a gap you would struggle to feel walking home, and anyone selling you the town on its safety record is selling you a difference of two.
For texture, this is a low-pressure sort of place by the usual measures. The neighbourhood areas covering the town average around 3,095 people per square kilometre, which sounds dense until you remember those boundaries hug the built-up core rather than the farmland around it. Unemployment runs at about 2%, and roughly 2% of households are overcrowded. None of that causes or prevents anything on its own, but it describes the kind of town producing these numbers: settled, working, not under strain.
On the mix of what gets recorded, the caveat matters more than the figures. With 431 crimes spread across 12 categories, a handful of incidents moves any share by several points, so this is a snapshot rather than a settled characteristic. With that understood: violence and sexual offences accounted for about 49% of recordings against roughly 35% nationally, which sounds worse than it is, because that heading is a broad statutory grouping covering everything from serious assault down to common assault without injury, and it is the largest category almost everywhere in England and Wales. Anti-social behaviour made up about 11% against roughly 16% nationally. Criminal damage and arson came in at about 10% against roughly 7%, and other theft at about 7% against a national share of about 7%, which is as close to identical as these things get. Shoplifting sat at about 5% against roughly 8% nationally, and public order at about 5% against roughly 7%.
What happens after a report is a separate question from how safe the place is, and the two should never be stirred together. Devon and Cornwall Police charged a suspect in about 8% of cases over the year to May 2026, against roughly 12% across England and Wales, which places the force 42nd out of 42. About 26% of cases were closed with no suspect identified at all. That is a force-wide figure covering an area running from Bude to the Isles of Scilly, and it carries no street-level signal about Callington specifically. It is still the honest answer to the question people actually mean when they ask whether somewhere is safe, which is usually some version of "and if something happens, then what".
So: ordinary, and ordinary is not nothing. Callington will not worry you, but the town's safety case rests on a two-point gap and a police force that catches fewer people than most, which is a thinner argument than the quiet streets make it look.