On the published numbers, no, which is the last thing anyone expects to read about an archipelago. The recorded crime rate here runs well over triple the local-authority average. Anti-social behaviour makes up a far bigger share of it than it does nationally. Unemployment and overcrowding are close to nothing. This is not a dangerous place in the way the headline rate implies, but the rate is real and it deserves an explanation rather than a shrug.
Police.uk recorded 505 crimes across the area in the year to May 2026, and the published rate for that period works out at about 122 crimes per thousand people. That is roughly 206% above the Isles of Scilly local-authority average. Both are published figures calculated on different population bases, so the sensible move is to read them side by side rather than try to reconcile them: the area's own rate of about 122 per thousand against a local-authority rate of about 40 per thousand.
The gap is worth sitting with, because the islands take in a large seasonal visitor population that never appears in a resident-population denominator. Incidents get counted. The people generating and experiencing them, in high summer, largely do not. Any small place with a big tourist season produces a rate that overstates what residents actually live with, and this is about as extreme a version of that as England offers.
The texture of the place does not look like a high-crime area by any other measure. Population density averages around 1,400 people per square kilometre across the islands' statistical areas, which reflects the built-up parts of St Mary's rather than the open water and heath around them. Unemployment sits at about 1%, and about 1% of households are overcrowded. None of those things cause or prevent crime on their own, but they describe a settled, working, uncrowded place rather than one under strain.
The category breakdown is where the story sharpens. Violence and sexual offences account for about 37% of recorded crime here against about 35% across England and Wales, which is effectively the national picture: it is the largest category almost everywhere, and it is a broad statutory grouping that includes common assault without injury. Anti-social behaviour is the genuine outlier at about 26% locally against about 16% nationally. Criminal damage and arson run at about 10% against 7%. Shoplifting sits lower than national at about 6% against 8%, as does other theft at about 5% against 7%, and public order is close to level at about 6% against 7%. The islands' surplus is concentrated in the noise-and-nuisance end of the register rather than the frightening end.
What happens after a report is a force-level matter rather than an island one. Devon and Cornwall Police charged a suspect in about 8% of cases over the year to May 2026, against about 12% nationally, and the force ranks 42nd of 42 forces on that measure. About 26% of cases were closed with no suspect identified. That says nothing about how safe any street is, and everything about the odds of resolution if something does happen to you. Those are two different questions and they get blurred constantly.
Safety is the weakest thing the published data says about these islands, and the honest version is that the rate is driven by summer nuisance in a very small resident population rather than by anything most people would recognise as danger. Read the category split before you read the headline, because the headline on its own will tell you something untrue about walking home here.