Mortlake is a safe area, and slightly safer than the borough around it. Crime runs a little below the borough average. Violence makes up a much smaller share of crime than it does nationally. The one real problem is car crime, so the main thing to protect here is whatever is parked on the street.
Police.uk recorded 1,421 crimes in Mortlake in the year from June 2025 to May 2026, a published rate of 68 per 1,000 people. That is about 8% below the average for Richmond upon Thames. A full twelve months of figures means one bad weekend cannot change the picture much.
For comparison, the borough-wide rate for Richmond upon Thames over the same period was about 74 crimes per 1,000 people, against 68 for Mortlake. Mortlake is slightly better than a borough that is not considered a high-crime one to begin with.
Mortlake is densely built for a riverside suburb, with an average of about 10,290 people per square kilometre across its neighbourhoods. Unemployment is about 3% and about 4% of households are overcrowded. These figures describe what kind of neighbourhood it is, mostly busy, working and housed with room to spare, and none of them on its own explains the crime rate.
The breakdown of crime is where Mortlake looks unusual. Violence and sexual offences, a broad legal category that includes common assault without injury, make up about 21% of recorded crime here against about 35% across England and Wales. Vehicle crime is nearly as large at about 20%, against 5% nationally, and it is the one category that clearly stands out. Anti-social behaviour, at about 18% against 16%, is close to the national share. Other theft makes up about 9% against 7%, and burglary about 6% against 4%, so both run a little high, as you would expect where there is more worth taking. Shoplifting is about 6% against 8%, which reflects how few big shops the district has. A useful check is to look up the specific street on police.uk to see how much vehicle crime it records, and to ask whether the house comes with off-street parking.
Recording a crime is one question and solving it is another. The Metropolitan Police Service charges a suspect in about 10% of cases, against about 12% nationally, which ranks it 33rd of 42 forces. About 53% of its cases are closed with no suspect identified. These are force-wide figures for all of London, and they tell you what to expect after a crime is reported, not how likely one is. On that measure, the answer is less reassuring than the crime rate.
Mortlake is safer than most of the borough around it, and violence and sexual offences make up a much smaller share of crime here than they do nationally. The thing to worry about is the car, more than personal safety.