Yes, safer than most of the district around it. Crime runs about a third below the Folkestone and Hythe rate. Unemployment is low. Overcrowding barely exists. The one category that sits out of line is anti-social behaviour, and the base behind it is small.
Police figures for the year from June 2025 to May 2026 put Hawkinge's recorded crime rate at about 54 per 1,000 residents, roughly 36% below the local-authority average. That covers 462 recorded crimes over those twelve months. Both are published figures, and the rate uses its own statistical population base, so it isn't a simple division of one by the other.
In plain numbers, Hawkinge's rate of about 54 per 1,000 compares with about 85 per 1,000 across the Folkestone and Hythe district. Buyers moving up from the district's busier towns are trading into one of its quieter corners, and the gap shows up in the published numbers, not just in the brochure.
The town's make-up fits those numbers. Housing is packed tightly for a place surrounded by countryside, at an average of about 3,900 people per square kilometre across its neighbourhoods, because the estates were built close together on the hill rather than spread out. Unemployment sits at about 2% and overcrowding at about 3%. None of that proves why crime is lower. It describes a settled commuter town where most houses are occupied by the people who own them.
The mix needs care because the totals are small. Violence and sexual offences make up about 38% of recorded crime here, against about 35% nationally, close to normal for a category that includes common assault without injury and tops the table almost everywhere. Anti-social behaviour accounts for about 23%, higher than the national 16%, and it's the one category that clearly stands out. Criminal damage and arson make up about 9% against 7% nationally, other theft about 7% against the same 7%, public order about 5% against 7%, and drugs about 4% against 4%. With only 462 crimes in the year, a handful of incidents can move any of these shares by several points, so read them as this year's snapshot rather than the town's settled character. Anti-social behaviour is also a police category broad enough to cover a lot of different nuisances, so a higher share doesn't tell a buyer what went on.
After a crime is reported, the figure that matters is how often Kent Police charges someone, and that's a force-wide statistic, not Hawkinge's own. Over the same twelve months, Kent Police charged a suspect in about 16% of cases, against about 12% nationally, placing it 6th of 42 forces in England and Wales. The flip side is that about 36% of the force's cases closed with no suspect identified. That answers whether someone gets caught, not how likely a crime is in the first place, and the two questions shouldn't be confused. Being a victim somewhere with a low crime rate is still being a victim.
Hawkinge is safe, and safety is one of its real strengths: its crime rate sits well below the district's, and the only category above the national share is too small a base to be a pattern.