Safety is Marylebone's weak point. The police record about 1,150 crimes a year for every 1,000 people who live there. Most of it is theft. Very little of it is violence. It is a busy neighbourhood where possessions go missing far more often than people get hurt.
In the year from June 2025 to May 2026, the police recorded 26,350 crimes in Marylebone, a published rate of about 1,148 per 1,000 residents and roughly 161% above the Westminster average. The street-level crime map on police.uk shows the pattern around any particular building, and it is the map to look at for the exact block you are thinking of buying in. For several centuries the area was best known for the public executions at the Tyburn gallows, so modern Marylebone's troubles are at least a step down in seriousness.
Westminster as a whole runs at about 440 recorded crimes per 1,000 residents over the same year. That borough average already includes the theatres and late nights of Soho and Covent Garden. Marylebone still comes in well above it.
The area is dense, at about 12,470 people per square kilometre. Unemployment is about 3% and about 6% of households are overcrowded. That describes a comfortable neighbourhood that happens to be packed tightly, and none of those figures explains the crime rate on its own.
The mix makes the shape clear. Theft from the person makes up about 27% of recorded crime here, against about 2% across England and Wales. Other theft is about 21% against 7% nationally, shoplifting about 16% against 8%, and robbery about 4% against 1%. Anti-social behaviour is about 10% here, below the national 16%. Violence and sexual offences is a broad legal grouping that includes common assault without injury and is the biggest category almost everywhere. It accounts for about 9% of crime here, well under the national 35%. Taken together, the crime here goes after what people carry and what shops stock, far more than the people themselves.
The Metropolitan Police charges a suspect in about 10% of cases, against about 12% nationally, which puts it 33rd of 42 forces in England and Wales for the year to May 2026. About 53% of its cases close with no suspect identified. Those are figures for the whole force, set by how the Met works across London, and they measure what happens after a crime, not how likely one is. For a stolen phone, the most likely result is a crime reference number for the insurer.
Day to day, Marylebone is a poor area for safety, though the risk falls far more on property than on the person. Residents who keep a close eye on their things will mostly keep them.