Catford is about as safe as the rest of Lewisham, and slightly less so. Its crime rate runs a little above the borough's. It's a dense, busy district, and the figures reflect that. Violence and sexual offences make up a smaller share of the total than they do nationally. The bigger shares are anti-social behaviour, shoplifting and offences involving cars.
The Metropolitan Police recorded 9,787 crimes in Catford in the year from June 2025 to May 2026, a published rate of about 128 per 1,000 residents. That's roughly 5% above the Lewisham average for the same twelve months.
Lewisham as a whole runs at about 122 crimes per 1,000 residents, against Catford's 128. The gap is six crimes per thousand people a year. You'd notice it in a spreadsheet long before you noticed it on the street.
The district is packed tightly. The average neighbourhood holds about 9,750 people per square kilometre, so most of life happens on pavements, platforms and shop fronts with plenty of other people around. Unemployment was about 5% at the 2021 Census, and about 12% of homes were overcrowded. Those figures describe how dense and how stretched the district is. They don't explain the crime rate, and they aren't a reason to expect trouble on any particular road.
The mix is more useful than the total. Violence and sexual offences make up about 31% of recorded crime in Catford, against about 35% across England and Wales. That category covers everything from common assault without injury upwards, and it's the biggest one in almost every area, so being a few points under the national share is ordinary. Anti-social behaviour is about 20% here against 16% nationally, and shoplifting about 10% against 8%. Public order offences and other theft each make up about 6%, just under the national 7%. Vehicle crime is about 7%, against 5% nationally, even though about four in ten Catford households don't own a car. The cars that are here get more than their share of attention.
As for whether anyone gets caught, the Metropolitan Police charges a suspect in about 10% of cases, against about 12% nationally. That puts it 33rd of 42 forces. About 53% of its cases close with no suspect identified. Those are figures for the whole force across London, not for Catford. They tell you how likely a reported crime is to be solved, not how likely you are to be a victim.
Catford is middling on safety. The rate is close to the borough average, and the crimes that push it above are mostly the everyday kind.