Downley is a safe place by the standards of its county. Crime is lower than in Buckinghamshire as a whole. The mix looks much like it does everywhere else. Unemployment and overcrowding barely register. If there is a weak spot, it is what happens after a crime is reported.
Thames Valley Police recorded 288 crimes in Downley in the year to May 2026, a published rate of about 56 per 1,000 residents. That is roughly 14% below the average for Buckinghamshire. Most of those 288 are the everyday kind that turn up in any place joined to a large town.
Across Buckinghamshire as a whole, the published rate for the same year is about 65 crimes per 1,000 residents, against Downley's 56. That is a clear gap, though not a dramatic one. Downley is part of the general sprawl down the hill, and its crime numbers say so.
Downley is fairly densely built for somewhere that calls itself a village, at about 3,900 people per square kilometre averaged across its neighbourhoods. At the 2021 Census, unemployment was about 2% and about 2% of households were overcrowded. None of these explains a crime rate on its own. Together they describe settled family housing where few households are under strain.
By category, violence and sexual offences made up about 34% of recorded crime, against about 35% across England and Wales. That broad legal grouping includes common assault without injury and is the biggest category nearly everywhere, so here it is roughly the national norm. Shoplifting accounted for about 13%, against about 8% nationally, and anti-social behaviour for about 11%, against 16%. Other theft, at about 8%, sits close to its national 7%, as do public order offences and criminal damage at about 7% each. Downley's total is small enough that a handful of incidents can move any of these shares by several points, so the mix is a snapshot of one year and could look different the next. Anyone weighing up a particular house can look up that street on the police's own crime map.
What happens after a crime is reported is the force's business, and the figures cover all of it. Thames Valley Police charges a suspect in about 9% of cases, against about 12% nationally, which puts it 37th of 42 forces in England and Wales. About 37% of its cases close with no suspect identified. None of this tells you how likely a crime is in Downley. It tells you that if one happens, the odds of anybody being charged are worse than the national figure.
Downley is a safe place to live, with crime well below the county rate and nothing in the mix that stands out once the small numbers are allowed for. The weak point is the force's clear-up record, which is shared by every town Thames Valley Police covers.