On the recorded numbers, no. The town logs more crime per head than the district wrapped around it, by roughly 60%. Violence and criminal damage take a bigger share of the total than they do nationally. Anti-social behaviour and shoplifting take a smaller share. A town that looks this sleepy from the outside is posting figures that do not match the postcard.
Police.uk recorded 714 offences in the town in the year to May 2026, and the published rate for the same period works out at about 75 crimes per 1,000 residents. Those two are published separately rather than one being the other divided by the town's headcount, because the rate is built on statistical-area populations rather than a settlement boundary. Anyone doing the sum at home will get a different answer and the wrong end of the argument.
The comparison is the part that stings. West Devon as a whole records about 47 crimes per 1,000 residents over that same year. Okehampton records about 75. Both figures come from the same source over the same twelve months, so the gap is real rather than an artefact of two datasets being held up next to each other in bad light.
What produces it is not obvious from the surrounding texture. Population density across the town's neighbourhoods averages about 3,510 people per square kilometre, which is town-shaped rather than field-shaped and worth remembering for anyone picturing a hamlet. Unemployment sits at about 2%. Overcrowded households sit at about 2%. None of those numbers causes crime, and none of them is doing anything unusual. On paper this reads like an ordinary small Devon town, which is exactly why the rate surprises people who look it up.
The mix needs reading carefully rather than quickly. Violence and sexual offences make up about 47% of recorded crime here against about 35% nationally, and that category is a broad statutory grouping covering everything up to and including common assault where nobody is injured, so it runs largest almost everywhere. Anti-social behaviour accounts for about 12% locally against about 16% nationally, and shoplifting about 4% against about 8%, both of them below the national share. Criminal damage and arson run about 10% against about 7%. Public order sits at about 7% in both the town and the country, which is to say it is doing nothing interesting at all.
Reporting something and getting an outcome are separate questions, and the second one is where Devon and Cornwall Police struggle. The force charges a suspect in about 8% of cases against about 12% nationally, and ranks 42nd out of the 42 forces in England and Wales over the twelve months to May 2026. About 26% of cases close with no suspect identified at all. That is a force-wide record rather than a statement about Okehampton's streets, and it measures what happens after a crime rather than how likely one is, but it is the honest answer to the question everyone actually asks, which is whether anyone will be caught.
Safety is the weakest thing about this town by some distance, and it is the one dimension where the numbers refuse to flatter it. The rate sits well above its own district, the follow-up record from the force covering it is the worst in the country, and neither of those is fixed by the fact that the moor looks lovely in the morning.