Not by Kingston's standards, and Kingston is the comparison that counts here. Crime runs about half as high again as the rest of the borough. Shoplifting takes far more than its usual share. Violence takes less than its usual share. Norbiton has more crime than its neighbours, and less of it is the frightening kind than the total suggests.
Police-recorded crime in Norbiton came to 6,760 offences in the year from June 2025 to May 2026, a published rate of about 139 per 1,000 people. That is roughly 54% above the Kingston upon Thames average. The figure covers twelve full months, so it reflects a pattern and can't be blamed on one bad weekend.
Across Kingston upon Thames as a whole, the published rate is about 90 per 1,000 people. Next to Norbiton's 139, that is a clear gap, and in a borough that is calm by London standards, being the busier part still counts against it.
Norbiton is dense, with about 10,200 people per square kilometre on average. About 3% of residents are unemployed and about 6% of households are overcrowded. Those numbers describe a crowded, mostly working neighbourhood, and none of them on its own explains the crime rate. A place with low unemployment and high crime in the same postcodes is a poor fit for the usual theories about why crime happens where it does.
The mix of crimes matters more than the total. Violence and sexual offences are the largest category here at about 24%, but nationally they make up about 35%, and the category includes common assault where nobody was hurt. Anti-social behaviour is about 20% against 16% nationally. Shoplifting is about 17% against 8% nationally, the widest gap on the list. Public order offences are about 7% and other theft about 7%, both close to the national shares, and drugs offences are about 6% against 4%. The categories running above the national pattern mostly happen to shops and in the street, and the one people fear most runs below it. Street-level crime maps for the exact road, checked over more than a single month, will show whether a particular house is near a parade of shops or well away from one.
Charging decisions are made across the whole force, so this is a Metropolitan Police figure, not Norbiton's own. The Metropolitan Police Service charges a suspect in about 10% of the crimes it records, against about 12% nationally, which ranks it 33rd of 42 forces over the year from June 2025 to May 2026. Across the force, about 53% of cases are closed with no suspect identified. That figure says nothing about how safe Norbiton is, but it is worth knowing for anyone expecting a police report to get their property back.
Safety is Norbiton's weakest point. The crime rate is well above the rest of the borough, even though the crimes behind it are less violent than the headline makes them sound.