Yes. Highbury is one of the calmer corners of a busy inner-London borough. Its crime rate is about a quarter below Islington's. The commonest problem is someone taking a phone or bag on the street, more often than violence. Most residents get through the year without being a victim of anything. That's a good result for somewhere this densely packed.
The Metropolitan Police recorded 5,691 crimes in Highbury in the twelve months from June 2025 to May 2026, a published rate of about 139 offences per 1,000 residents, roughly a quarter below the Islington average. Those are the published figures, and the rate is calculated on a slightly different population base from the one a quick sum on a calculator would use, so leave the arithmetic to the people who published it.
Islington as a whole recorded about 188 offences per 1,000 residents over the same twelve months, against Highbury's 139. Highbury is a quieter part of a busy borough, and the borough average includes some of London's busiest streets, so Highbury looks good by comparison without being remote from city life.
This is a very dense place. On average about 16,900 people live in every square kilometre of Highbury. The 2021 census put unemployment at about 4% and about 7% of households as overcrowded. That is the neighbourhood the numbers describe: a dense, well-employed inner-London place. None of those figures explains the crime rate, and drawing a causal line from any of them to the crime figures would be guesswork.
Violence and sexual offences make up about 22% of Highbury's recorded crime, against about 35% across England and Wales. That category covers everything from common assault without injury upwards, so a share well below the national figure is good news. Anti-social behaviour is about 20% of the total here against about 16% nationally. The one category that stands out is theft from the person, the snatched phone or lifted wallet, at about 11% of Highbury's crime compared with about 2% nationally. Other theft is about 8% against 7%, public order about 7%, matching the national share, and drug offences about 6% against 4%. The risk here is to your belongings more than to you, which makes holding your phone loosely at a bus stop the biggest everyday risk.
What happens after a report is a separate question, and the answer is less encouraging. Over the same twelve months, the Metropolitan Police charged a suspect in about 10% of cases across the whole force area, against about 12% nationally, which puts it 33rd of 42 forces. About 53% of the force's cases closed with no suspect identified. These figures are for the whole Metropolitan Police area, not for Highbury's streets, and they say how likely a report is to end in a charge, not how likely a crime is to happen. They do mean a stolen phone is more likely to be gone for good than returned with an apology.
Highbury is one of Islington's safer areas, and its biggest problem is street theft from people's pockets and bags, while violence runs well below the national share.