Not by Cornwall's standards, and the answer has more to do with the town centre than with the streets people live on. Recorded crime runs about a sixth above the county average. Shoplifting takes a far larger slice of it here than it does nationally. Unemployment and overcrowding are both low. This is not a rough town, it is a small town carrying a much larger town's daytime population, and the crime figures are written by the second of those two things.
Police.uk recorded 2,213 crimes in the area in the year to May 2026, which works out at a published rate of about 86 per thousand residents. That sits roughly 16% above the Cornwall average. Both of those are published figures rather than anything calculated here, and the rate uses a statistical population base rather than a simple headcount of who sleeps in the town.
The comparison is worth seeing in full rather than as a bare percentage. Cornwall as a whole recorded about 74 crimes per thousand residents over the same twelve months, against Falmouth's 86. That is a real gap, but it is a gap between one figure and a county average that includes a great deal of very empty countryside, which flatters nobody with a high street.
The surrounding texture does not read like a place with a crime problem. Population density averages around 5,250 people per square kilometre across the area, which is town-tight rather than village-loose. Unemployment sits at about 2%, and about 2% of households are overcrowded. Those are descriptive facts about the neighbourhood rather than an explanation of the numbers above, and none of them is doing the work people usually assume.
The mix is where the picture sharpens. Violence and sexual offences make up about 36% of recorded crime here against about 35% nationally, which is effectively the national position: it is the largest category almost everywhere, it is a broad statutory grouping that includes common assault with no injury, and quoting it alone makes any town in England sound like a warzone. Anti-social behaviour runs at about 17% against 16% nationally, and vehicle crime at about 5% against 5%, both of them unremarkable. The outlier is shoplifting, at about 14% of recorded crime against about 8% nationally, with criminal damage and arson at about 9% against 7%. A retail-heavy centre serving a visitor economy produces exactly that shape, and it is the shape a buyer should read before concluding anything about their own front door.
What happens after a report is a separate question, and the answer is force-wide rather than local. 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 out of 42 forces. About 26% of cases were closed with nobody identified. None of that measures how safe a street is, but it does answer the question people actually mean when they ask whether anyone gets caught.
Safety is the weakest thing about this town on paper. The honest reading is that a busy working centre with a retail crime problem drags the whole area's rate above the county, and that the residential streets are living with a number generated a few minutes' walk away from most of them.