Maidstone is safe enough to live in, and noticeably less safe than the villages around it. Crime runs about a fifth above the borough average. Anti-social behaviour is the category that stands out. The county's police charge suspects more often than most forces. The town carries the borough's crime figures so the villages don't have to.
Kent Police recorded 13,130 crimes in Maidstone in the year from June 2025 to May 2026. The published rate for that year is about 111 crimes per 1,000 residents, roughly 18% above the average for the local authority. That's a published rate, worked out on the statistical areas' own population base, so it won't match any sum a reader does with the town's headcount.
For comparison, the Maidstone local authority as a whole recorded about 94 crimes per 1,000 residents over the same year. So it's 111 in the town against 94 across the borough. The borough figure includes a ring of quiet villages whose low numbers pull the average down, which is great for the villages and less flattering for the town they all drive into.
Maidstone is a built-up place, with an average of about 5,700 people per square kilometre across its neighbourhoods. Unemployment was about 3% at the 2021 census, and about 4% of households were overcrowded. That describes a busy, working county town, not a place in trouble, and none of those figures explains the crime rate on its own.
The mix of crime is closer to the national pattern than the headline rate suggests. Violence and sexual offences make up about 37% of recorded crime here, against about 35% across England and Wales, and that category is the biggest almost everywhere because it covers a wide legal range, including common assault where nobody was hurt. The clearest difference is anti-social behaviour, at about 20% here against about 16% nationally. Criminal damage and arson make up about 9%, against about 7% nationally, and shoplifting about 9%, against about 8%. Other theft sits at about 7% and drugs at about 4%, both within a point of the national figures. So the town doesn't have an unusual kind of crime. It has somewhat more of the ordinary, noisy kind that shows up when a lot of people share a small town centre.
What happens after a report is a separate question from how much crime there is. Across the force, Kent Police charges a suspect in about 16% of cases, against about 12% nationally, which puts it 6th of 42 forces in England and Wales over the year from June 2025 to May 2026. That's a force-wide figure, not Maidstone's own. About 36% of cases across the force were closed with no suspect identified, which is the honest answer to whether someone will be caught.
Safety is Maidstone's weak spot. Crime sits clearly above the borough average, with anti-social behaviour doing most of the damage, so check the specific street before you buy rather than trusting the town's name.