Not on the recorded numbers, no. Crime here runs roughly half again above the district average. Unemployment is close to nil. Overcrowding barely registers. A comfortable market town carrying a crime rate that belongs to somewhere much busier, and only one of those two facts tends to come up on the way to a viewing.
The police.uk figures record 590 crimes in the year to May 2026, which gives a published rate of about 72 per 1,000 residents. That sits roughly 47% above the local authority average. Both numbers are published as they stand, and neither of them points at a street, a night of the week or a particular corner of town.
The comparison is worth seeing whole rather than as a percentage. Across the South Hams, the rate over that same year was about 49 crimes per 1,000 residents. Kingsbridge records about 72. Same district, same force, same twelve months, and the town's own postcodes carry the higher figure.
Nothing in the surrounding texture looks like the shorthand version of a high-crime area. Population density averages about 2,800 people per square kilometre across the built-up part, unemployment sits at about 1%, and overcrowded households at about 2%. None of those figures causes or prevents anything, and they are listed here because the picture a buyer usually assembles from that kind of number does not match the crime rate at all.
The mix tells you more than the total does. Violence and sexual offences account for about 41% of recorded crime against about 35% nationally, and that category is a wide statutory grouping running from serious assault down to common assault without injury, which is why it tops the list almost everywhere in the country. Anti-social behaviour is about 17% locally against about 16% nationally, near enough the same. Criminal damage and arson is about 11% against about 7%, the clearest local difference in the list. Shoplifting comes in at about 5% against about 8% nationally.
What happens after a report is a different question from how safe the area is, and worth answering separately. Devon and Cornwall Police charged a suspect in about 8% of cases over the twelve months to May 2026, against about 12% nationally, placing the force 42nd of the 42 in England and Wales. About 26% of cases were closed with nobody identified. Those are force-wide outcomes rather than anything specific to this town, and they are the plain answer to what people actually mean when they ask whether anyone gets caught.
Safety is the weakest thing about Kingsbridge, and there is no reading of the published figures that softens it. Pleasant town, poor rate, and both of those hold at the same time.