Melksham is safe, measured against a county that sets the bar unusually high. Crime runs a little above the Wiltshire average. Unemployment is low. Overcrowded homes are rare. The comparison looks worse than it is mostly because Wiltshire is so quiet.
Police.uk recorded 1,668 crimes in Melksham over the twelve months to May 2026, a published rate of about 71 per 1,000 residents. That's roughly 14% above the Wiltshire average. Those are the published figures, calculated on the police's own population base, and they're a count of recorded crime, not a tour of any particular street.
To put the two side by side: Melksham sits at about 71 crimes per 1,000 residents and Wiltshire as a whole at about 62. A gap, but not a gulf. Anyone expecting a market town to match the county's villages and hamlets is comparing a high street with a hedgerow.
The area itself is fairly settled. Melksham averages about 4,160 people per square kilometre, which counts as busy for Wiltshire. Unemployment was about 2% and overcrowding about 2% at the 2021 Census. That describes a working town of ordinary households, which is about as useful as neighbourhood texture gets.
What gets recorded matters more than how much. Violence and sexual offences made up about 41% of Melksham's recorded crime, against about 35% nationally. That's the biggest category almost everywhere, and it's a broad legal grouping that includes common assault without injury, so the label sounds much more alarming than much of what it covers. Anti-social behaviour made up about 22%, against 16% nationally, and that's the clearest gap between Melksham and the national mix. Criminal damage and arson came to about 8%, against 7%, and public order offences to about 7%, against 7% nationally, which is effectively level. Shoplifting, at about 6% against 8%, and other theft, at about 4% against 7%, both run below the national share. The typical Melksham complaint is about someone behaving badly, not something going missing.
After a report, the numbers belong to the force, not the town. Wiltshire Police charges a suspect in about 10% of cases, against about 12% nationally, which puts it 32nd of 42 forces over the twelve months to May 2026. About 34% of cases closed with no suspect identified. That's the honest answer to "will they catch them", and it's a force-wide figure. It says nothing about whether one Melksham street is safer than another, and it answers a different question from the crime rate above.
Melksham's safety is middling: a normal working town with a little more nuisance than the county around it. Nothing to lose sleep over, but not quite the Wiltshire postcard either.