Yes, and by a margin that makes the rest of Portsmouth look like a different city. Recorded crime here runs at roughly a third of the city-wide rate. The place is dense enough to be properly suburban and quiet enough that nothing much happens in it. Almost nobody is out of work. If you came here looking for a safety problem, you will have to bring your own.
Police recorded 627 crimes in the area over the twelve months to May 2026, which works out at a published rate of around 46 per thousand residents. That sits roughly 64% below the Portsmouth local authority average. Both are published figures calculated on their own statistical bases, so the comparison is the useful part rather than the arithmetic.
The comparison deserves both numbers side by side, because a percentage gap does not land the way two rates do. Portsmouth as a whole runs at around 126 recorded crimes per thousand residents. Drayton runs at around 46. Same council, same police force, same twenty-minute drive, and a completely different set of numbers at the end of it.
The texture behind that is not mysterious. Population density averages around 4,450 people per square kilometre, which is genuine suburban density rather than village emptiness. Unemployment sits at about 2%, and overcrowded households at about 1%. That is the profile of a settled, working, owner-heavy suburb, and it is describing the same place the crime figures describe rather than explaining it.
On what actually gets recorded, violence and sexual offences make up around 42% of crimes here against roughly 35% nationally. That category name is more frightening than the category is: it is a broad statutory grouping that includes common assault without injury, and it is the largest single category almost everywhere in England and Wales. Anti-social behaviour accounts for around 12% locally against roughly 16% nationally, shoplifting around 11% against about 8%, public order around 7% against a national 7%, criminal damage and arson around 6% against roughly 7%, and vehicle crime around 6% against about 5%. On most of those the local share sits within a couple of points of the national one, which is the honest summary: the mix here is unremarkable, and the volume is what makes the difference.
What happens after a report is a separate question, and the answer is force-wide rather than local. Hampshire Constabulary charged a suspect in about 9% of cases over the twelve months to May 2026, against roughly 12% nationally, which places it 38th of 42 forces. About 35% of cases were closed with no suspect identified. None of that is a measure of how safe this area is, and it should not be read as one. It is the answer to a different question, which is whether reporting something leads anywhere.
Safety is the clearest thing this place has going for it, and the numbers are not close enough to argue about. People move here for the quiet and then complain there is nothing to do, which is the same sentence twice.