Devizes is less safe than the rest of Wiltshire, which is not a line that makes it into the tourist leaflets. Its crime rate runs about a third above the county's. Unemployment is low. Overcrowding is rare. The gap comes from a busier-than-expected town centre, not from a struggling estate.
Wiltshire Police recorded 1,956 crimes in Devizes in the year from June 2025 to May 2026, a published rate of about 83 per 1,000 residents. That rate sits roughly 33% above the local-authority average. Both figures are published statistics. The rate uses its own population base, so it won't match a simple calculation from the town's headcount, and anyone who tries that calculation will get a different answer.
In plain numbers, Devizes is on about 83 crimes per 1,000 residents, and Wiltshire as a whole is on about 62. The county average takes in a lot of villages where the most serious local incident is a dispute over a hedge, which flatters it. Devizes is still the one sitting above it.
The neighbourhoods behind those numbers are not what the phrase "high crime" usually suggests. The town averages about 3,560 residents per square kilometre, which is compact for a market town. Unemployment is about 2%, and about 2% of households are overcrowded. None of that describes a place under strain. It describes an ordinary, reasonably comfortable town that records more incidents than its county neighbours.
The mix of crime is closer to the national pattern than the headline rate might lead you to expect. Violence and sexual offences, a broad legal category that includes common assault without injury, make up about 39% of recorded crime here, against about 35% nationally. Anti-social behaviour is where Devizes stands out, at about 23% of incidents compared with 16% nationally. Criminal damage and arson account for about 9%, against 7% nationally. Shoplifting, at about 8%, and public order offences, at about 7%, are almost exactly in line with the rest of England and Wales. Other theft is slightly lower here, at about 5% against 7%. The part of Devizes's record that is out of line with the national picture is the anti-social behaviour.
What happens after a report is a separate question from how much crime there is. Wiltshire Police charges a suspect in about 10% of cases, against about 12% nationally, which ranks the force 32nd of 42 in England and Wales on that measure, over the year from June 2025 to May 2026. About 34% of cases across the force are closed with no suspect identified. These are force-wide figures covering the whole county, not a measure of Devizes's own streets. The honest answer to "will they catch whoever did it" is: less often than the brochure would like.
Devizes is not dangerous, but it is the less safe part of a safe county. The difference is mostly anti-social behaviour rather than serious harm, and it is real enough that a buyer should know about it.