Yes, and by a margin that is hard to argue with. Recorded crime here runs well under half the Cornwall rate. The whole area logs fewer offences in a year than a single city street can manage in a month. Low density, almost no unemployment, very little overcrowding. This is a quiet granite village where the loudest recurring event is term starting.
Police recorded 86 offences across the area in the year to May 2026, giving a published rate of about 29 per thousand people. That sits roughly 60% below the Cornwall average. Both of those are published figures calculated on statistical-area populations rather than something worked out from the headcount of the village, and the gap between them is the part worth keeping.
The comparison reads better with both numbers in view. Cornwall as a whole records about 74 offences per thousand people. Mabe Burnthouse records about 29. That is not a place scraping in under the line, it is a place in a different part of the distribution entirely, and it holds even with a university campus sitting inside the boundary.
The texture behind the numbers is unremarkable in the best sense. Population density averages about 1,490 people per square kilometre, which in a place with two census output areas mostly reflects student halls rather than terraced streets. Unemployment runs at about 1%, and around 4% of households are classed as overcrowded. None of that causes anything on its own, but it is the profile of a settled, owner-heavy village rather than somewhere under pressure.
What happens after a report is a separate question, and the answer is less flattering. Devon and Cornwall Police charge a suspect in about 8% of recorded cases, against about 12% nationally, which places the force last of the 42 forces in England and Wales on that measure. In about 26% of cases the investigation closes with nobody identified at all. That figure describes the force, not this village, and it answers a different question from the crime rate: how little happens here is one thing, what gets resolved when it does is another. Shed locks and a camera on the drive remain sensible in a place where the recovery odds are what they are.
Safety is the clearest strength on this page. The recorded crime rate is low in absolute terms and low against the county, and nothing in the area's profile suggests that is a fluke of one quiet year.