Yes, comfortably. Cowes records fewer than fifty crimes per thousand residents a year. The island as a whole runs closer to eighty. Anti-social behaviour makes up a smaller share of the total here than it does across England and Wales. For a town that fills up for one week every August and then goes back to sleep, that is a decent way to behave.
The published rate from police.uk is about 46 recorded crimes per thousand residents, drawn from 686 offences over the year to May 2026. Both numbers are as published. The rate is calculated against the population of the statistical areas the police use rather than the town's headcount, so the count and the rate answer slightly different questions and should not be checked against each other on the back of an envelope.
The comparison is the part worth holding. The Isle of Wight as a whole records about 83 crimes per thousand residents over the same period, against roughly 46 in Cowes, which puts the town around 44% below its own local authority. That gap is not marginal. Whatever is driving the island's headline number, it is happening somewhere other than the west bank of the Medina.
The texture behind those numbers is unremarkable in the way that usually goes with them. Population density averages about 4,290 people per square kilometre across the area, which is town density rather than village density. Unemployment sits at roughly 3%, and about 2% of households are overcrowded. None of those figures explains the crime rate on its own, and none of them is offered as a cause. They describe a settled, working, moderately dense town, which is what Cowes is.
On what actually gets recorded, violence and sexual offences account for about 52% of offences in Cowes, against about 35% nationally. That category needs reading carefully before anyone panics. It is a broad statutory grouping that runs from common assault without injury through to the most serious offences on the books, and it is the largest single category almost everywhere in the country. Criminal damage and arson make up about 10% locally against roughly 7% nationally, and public order about 9% against roughly 7%. Anti-social behaviour runs at about 10% here against roughly 16% nationally, which is the one category where Cowes sits clearly below the national shape. Other theft is about 7% locally and about 7% nationally, which is as close to identical as these things get, and burglary is about 4% locally against roughly 4% nationally. On a total of 686 offences, shares move by a point or two on a handful of incidents, so the mix is a shape rather than a verdict.
What happens after a report is a separate question with a less flattering answer, and it belongs to the force rather than the town. Hampshire Constabulary charges a suspect in about 9% of cases, against about 12% nationally, which ranks it 38th of the 42 forces. About 35% of cases close with nobody identified at all. Those figures cover every street the force polices and carry no signal about Cowes specifically. They say nothing about how likely something is to happen to you, and everything about what follows if it does.
Safety is the thing Cowes does best. A town sitting this far below its own local authority average, on published figures rather than reputation, has earned the right to stop apologising for the island's headline number.