Faringdon is safer than any city and less safe than the villages around it. Crime runs about a quarter above the Vale of White Horse average. Shoplifting takes a bigger share than it does nationally. Unemployment barely registers. It is a market town with a market town's problems, a few more of them than its neighbours.
Police records put crime in Faringdon at about 73 per 1,000 residents in the year to May 2026, from 682 recorded crimes over the twelve months that started in June 2025. That published rate sits roughly 25% above the average for the Vale of White Horse as a whole. Neither figure is dramatic on its own. The gap is the part worth noticing.
Put side by side, the numbers look like this: about 73 crimes per 1,000 residents in Faringdon against about 58 per 1,000 across the Vale. The district average is pulled down by a great deal of farmland and small villages where the most serious local incident is a tractor on the wrong verge. A town with a centre, shops and pubs will always record more than the fields around it. The question is how much more, and here the answer is a quarter.
The neighbourhood texture does not look like the usual story behind above-average crime. Faringdon's built-up area averages about 3,800 people per square kilometre, unemployment sits at about 2% and about 2% of households are overcrowded. Those are the numbers of a working, reasonably comfortable town, not a stretched one. Whatever drives the rate, it is not visible hardship on the doorstep.
The mix of crime tells more than the total. Violence and sexual offences make up about 41% of recorded crime, against about 35% nationally. That category is the largest almost everywhere and covers a wide statutory range, including common assault without injury, so the fair reading is a few points higher than usual rather than a town with a violence problem. Anti-social behaviour is lower than the national share, at about 13% against 16%. Shoplifting is where Faringdon stands out, at about 13% of recorded crime against about 8% nationally. Public order and other theft each account for about 8%, a point above the national 7%, and criminal damage and arson matches the national share at about 7%. The high street carries more of the town's crime than most, which is a problem for retailers first and residents second.
What happens after a report is a separate question, and it is answered at force level rather than town level. Thames Valley Police charged a suspect in about 9% of cases over the year to May 2026, against about 12% nationally. About 37% of cases across the force closed with no suspect identified. None of that measures how safe Faringdon is; it measures how likely a reported crime is to end in a charge anywhere in the Thames Valley. The honest answer to "will they catch them" is: not usually.
Safety is below average for Faringdon, a quarter worse than the Vale around it, though the extra is concentrated in the shops rather than on the doorstep.