The City of London is a safe place to live, even though its crime figure looks like a misprint. The published rate comes to about one recorded crime a year for every resident. That is still below the City's own average. Theft makes up most of it, and violence is a small slice. The count is set against a handful of residents, but it comes from a weekday crowd many times their size.
The rate is high because of how it's counted. Police.uk publishes about 983 recorded crimes for every 1,000 residents across the City neighbourhoods this page covers, in the year from June 2025 to May 2026, roughly 16% below the local-authority average. That year's total was 20,812 crimes. Those crimes happen among everyone who passes through the Square Mile, but the rate divides them by roughly 6,000 people who sleep here.
The City of London as a whole runs at about 1,171 recorded crimes per 1,000 residents over the same year, against about 983 in the neighbourhoods covered here. Both figures carry the same distortion from all the people who work here, and the residential parts come out lower.
The area is dense and comfortably off. The average density across its neighbourhoods is about 5,080 people per square kilometre, unemployment is about 3% and about 6% of households are overcrowded. None of that explains the crime count, which has far more to do with who visits than with who lives here.
The crime mix says the same thing. Other theft makes up about 21% of recorded crime here, against about 7% nationally, and shoplifting about 16%, against about 8%. Theft from the person, mostly pickpocketing and snatched phones, is about 16%, against roughly 2% across England and Wales. Violence and sexual offences, the broad statutory group that includes common assault without injury and is the biggest category almost everywhere, are about 14% here against about 35% nationally. Anti-social behaviour is about 8% against 16%, and public order about 5% against 7%, both close to or below the national shares. In the 3rd and 4th centuries the City was raided by Picts, Scots and Saxons. Today's raiders go for the shop shelves and the coat pockets.
Whether anyone is caught is a separate question from how safe the area is. The Metropolitan Police Service charges a suspect in about 10% of cases across its whole force area, against about 12% nationally, which ranks it 33rd of 42 forces in the year to May 2026. About 53% of its cases close with no suspect identified. Those are force-wide numbers for all of London, and the City's own streets don't change them.
For residents, the City is one of the safer central addresses. The recorded figure is driven by visitors and theft, while violence and anti-social behaviour run below the national pattern.