Mitcham is moderately safe, a notch rougher than the rest of its borough. Crime runs a little above the Merton average. Violence makes up no bigger a share than it does anywhere else. Nuisance and car crime are the parts that stick out. It is a busy town with busy-town numbers, on the wrong side of a borough line it misses by a modest margin.
The published crime rate for Mitcham was about 87 crimes per 1,000 people in the year to May 2026, roughly 12% above the average for Merton as a whole. Police recorded 6,951 crimes across the area over those twelve months. That count sounds alarming until it is set against a town of this size, which is why the rate per thousand people is the number to look at.
Merton's own rate over the same year was about 78 crimes per 1,000 people, against Mitcham's 87. A borough average blends its busiest streets with its sleepiest, and Mitcham supplies more of the busy. Anyone weighing a particular road can look it up on the police's own street-level crime map, which shows the last few months of reports around a postcode and does more for a viewing than any borough figure.
The area is dense, at about 11,900 people per square kilometre on average across its neighbourhoods. Unemployment stands at about 4%, and about 16% of households count as overcrowded. Those figures describe the texture of the place, a lot of people living close together, and none of them explains a crime rate on its own.
The mix looks a lot like the country's. Violence and sexual offences make up about 35% of Mitcham's recorded crime, the same 35% they make up across England and Wales, and that category covers everything from serious assault down to a shove that caused no injury. Anti-social behaviour is where Mitcham runs ahead, at about 23% against 16% nationally. Vehicle crime comes in at about 7% against 5%. Criminal damage and arson, other theft and public order offences each make up about 6%, a little under their national shares of about 7%. Car owners here have more reason to check the door is locked than to check over their shoulder.
What happens after a report is a separate question from how much crime there is. The Metropolitan Police Service charges a suspect in about 10% of cases, against about 12% nationally, a figure for the whole of London that says nothing about Mitcham's streets in particular, and it ranks 33rd of 42 forces on that measure. About 53% of cases across the force close with no suspect identified. A decent lock does more work than the follow-up call.
Mitcham lands in the middle on safety: busier and slightly rougher than Merton overall, and level with the national picture on violence and sexual offences, the category that worries people most.