Safe enough for ordinary life, and worse than the villages it gets compared with. Around 63 recorded crimes per thousand residents. The district average is 50. Exmouth holds the shops, the seafront and the late licences for a district made mostly of villages, and the town where everyone goes out is the town where the incidents get logged. That is the whole shape of the answer: this is not a dangerous place, it is the busy place in a quiet area.
Police.uk recorded 2,359 crimes in the year to May 2026, giving a published rate of about 63 per thousand residents, which sits roughly 27% above the East Devon average. Both figures are published rates rather than anything worked out here, and they use their own population bases, so the honest use of them is comparison rather than arithmetic.
Set side by side, East Devon as a whole came in at about 50 recorded crimes per thousand residents over the same year, against Exmouth's 63. The gap is real and it is not enormous. Anyone moving from a city will find the numbers restful. Anyone moving from Lympstone will notice.
The texture behind those numbers is a town, not an estate. Population density averages about 5,200 people per square kilometre across the area, unemployment sits at 2%, and 2% of households are overcrowded. None of those figures causes anything on its own, and none of them describes a place under strain. They describe somewhere with terraces, a high street and enough people in one spot to generate a Friday night.
The mix is worth reading against the national one rather than alone. Violence and sexual offences account for 46% of recorded crime here against 35% across England and Wales, and that heading is a broad statutory grouping that includes common assault with no injury, which is why it tops the list almost everywhere. Criminal damage and arson run at 10% locally against 7% nationally. Anti-social behaviour is 15% here against 16% nationally, other theft 6% against 7%, and public order 6% against 7%, all close enough to call ordinary. Shoplifting is 5% locally against 8% nationally, which is the one category where the town does better than the country.
What happens after a report is a separate question, and the answer belongs to the force rather than the town. Devon and Cornwall Police charged a suspect in about 8% of cases over the twelve months to May 2026, against about 12% nationally, which places the force 42nd of 42 forces. In 26% of cases the file was closed with no suspect identified. That says nothing about which street you live on and everything about what to expect after the crime number is issued.
Crime is the least flattering thing in Exmouth's file. Not frightening, not a reason to strike the town off, but genuinely the softest part of the case for living here, and the part that a district-wide average will always hide.