Harrow is not a safe area by the numbers, with a recorded crime rate of about 139 per 1,000 residents. That is well above the rest of its own borough. Pickpocketing and anti-social behaviour run far ahead of the national mix. Violence and sexual offences make up a smaller share of the total than they do nationally. This is a town centre's crime record, and a buyer should read it as one.
In the year from June 2025 to May 2026, the Metropolitan Police recorded 8,785 crimes in Harrow, a published rate of about 139 per 1,000 residents. That puts the town roughly 64% above the average for the London Borough of Harrow as a whole.
The borough's own rate over the same year was about 85 per 1,000. Harrow is the borough's main town, so it carries the borough's shopping, its buses and its trains, and it carries a matching share of the borough's crime. Pinner and Stanmore get the quieter half of the deal.
The place is crowded. Harrow averages about 10,600 people per square kilometre, about 13% of households are overcrowded and unemployment runs at about 4%. That is the texture of a dense, working London town with a lot of flats and a lot of footfall, and it gives the crime figures plenty of people to happen around.
The mix is where Harrow shows its hand. Violence and sexual offences make up about 27% of recorded crime, below the national share of about 35%, and that category includes common assault where nobody was hurt. Anti-social behaviour is about 24% against about 16% nationally. Theft from the person, the pickpocket and snatched-phone category, is about 6% against about 2% nationally, triple the usual share. Shoplifting at about 9%, other theft at about 7% and vehicle crime at about 6% are all close to their national shares. St Anns shopping centre faces the tube station across College Road, the bus station is right beside it, and that is the obvious place for a crowd and its phones to part company. The Metropolitan Police's street-level crime map will show whether the street a buyer is looking at follows the town centre's pattern or keeps to itself, and it is worth checking a home near the station against one ten minutes' walk away.
As for what happens next, the Metropolitan Police charges a suspect in about 10% of cases, against about 12% nationally, placing it 33rd of 42 forces over the year to May 2026. In about 53% of cases nobody is identified at all. That is a force-wide figure for the whole of London, and it describes what happens after a crime is reported. It says nothing about how likely one is to happen in Harrow.
Harrow is a poor bet on safety, and most of that is the busy centre around the stations, so the further from the shopping centres the home is, the less of the headline figure it is likely to share.