Yes, Marchwood is a safe area, and comfortably so. The recorded crime rate here sits well below the level of the wider district around it, which is the dull, reassuring sort of statistic that never once trends on social media. There is no edge to it, no strip of trouble, no reputation that arrives before you do. It is a village where the most menacing thing on the street is usually the wheelie bins on collection day. That is not a slight. That is the entire selling point.
The published crime rate comes out at about forty-three recorded crimes per thousand people, and that lands roughly a quarter below the average for the wider New Forest district. Across the past year the village logged in the region of two hundred and fifty recorded offences in total, a number low enough that one unusually busy weekend would barely nudge it. These are the official published rates, not a figure scribbled on the back of an envelope by dividing one thing into another, and they point the same way whichever direction you read them from: a genuinely low-crime place measured against its own surroundings, not merely flattered by comparison with a city. For a family weighing up a house, that below-average line is a quiet but large part of what the asking price is actually buying. Nothing here is being sold on excitement, which is exactly how the people who live here like it.
So the verdict is about as clear as these things get. Marchwood is one of the safer places you could sensibly choose in this corner of Hampshire, and safety is the one dimension where it scores full marks without needing a single asterisk. You are not paying a premium for peace of mind here. You are getting it as standard.