Coleford is the rough end of the Forest of Dean on paper. Its crime rate runs close to double the district's. Anti-social behaviour makes up a bigger share than it does nationally. The totals are small enough that a few bad months move them. It's a small market town with a big-town number attached.
Gloucestershire Constabulary's figures, published on police.uk, record 399 crimes in Coleford in the year from June 2025 to May 2026. That gives a published rate of about 80 crimes per 1,000 residents, roughly 87% above the Forest of Dean average.
Put the two numbers side by side and the gap is plain. Coleford runs at about 80 per 1,000, and the Forest of Dean as a whole at about 43. The district around it is a low-crime place, which is exactly why the town stands out.
The town itself is compact and fairly comfortable. Its neighbourhoods average about 2,580 people per square kilometre, unemployment is about 2% and overcrowding is about 2%. None of that explains a high crime rate, and none of it is offered as a cause. As the district's main town, Coleford is where the Forest comes to shop, drink and wait for the bus, and the rate counts what happens to visitors on residents' streets as well.
The mix needs care. Violence and sexual offences make up about 34% of Coleford's recorded crime against about 35% nationally, so the category that sounds worst is running at the usual level. It covers a wide legal range, including common assault where nobody is hurt. Anti-social behaviour stands out, at about 28% of the total against 16% nationally, and criminal damage and arson make up about 10% against 7%. Public order and other theft are each about 6%, both close to the national 7%, and shoplifting is about 6% against 8% nationally. Fewer than 400 crimes in a year is a small base, and a handful of incidents can move any of these shares by several points, so they describe this particular year and little more. The market place has seen worse. In 1643 a Civil War skirmish burnt the market house and left a royalist major-general and two other officers shot dead from a window.
A useful check is police.uk's street-level map for the actual road under consideration. A town-wide rate built from a few hundred incidents can hide a street that barely appears on the map, and it can hide one that appears every month.
What happens after a report depends on the force, and it answers a different question from whether a street is safe. Gloucestershire Constabulary charges a suspect in about 9% of cases, against about 12% nationally, which puts it 39th of 42 forces in England and Wales. About 33% of its cases close with no suspect identified. These are force-wide figures for the year to May 2026, based on the eight months the force reported, and they say nothing about Coleford's streets in particular.
Safety is Coleford's weakest point. The town is no danger zone, but its rate sits far above a district that is otherwise calm, the anti-social behaviour shows up clearly in the mix, and the force covering it charges fewer suspects than most.