Old Sarum is safe in the way most of Wiltshire is safe, which is to say the numbers barely justify the question. Recorded crime sits a little above the county average. Unemployment is very low. Overcrowding is rare. The density is higher than the surrounding fields would suggest, and that is the most surprising thing on the sheet.
Wiltshire Police recorded 441 crimes in the area over the year to May 2026, and the published neighbourhood rate for the same period works out at about 69 per 1,000 residents. Both are published figures. The rate is not the count divided by the number of people living here, because it is calculated on a different statistical population, so anyone reaching for a calculator to check it will end up with a number that means nothing.
The comparison is the part worth seeing in full. Across Wiltshire as a whole the rate over that period is about 62 per 1,000, against the area's own 69, which puts Old Sarum roughly 10% above its own local authority. The gap is genuine and it is modest, and it is measured against a rural county rather than against anywhere with a late licence.
The texture behind those figures is unremarkable. Population density averages about 3,260 people per square kilometre, which is city-shaped for a place ringed by farmland, and reflects an estate built compactly rather than a village that sprawled. Unemployment runs at about 2% and about 3% of households are counted as overcrowded. None of those things causes crime, and none of them is offered here as an explanation for it.
The category split needs handling with care, because the totals are small enough that a dozen incidents can move a share by several points. On that basis: violence and sexual offences account for about 44% of records against about 35% nationally, anti-social behaviour about 19% against 16%, criminal damage and arson about 10% against 7%, and public order about 8% against 7%. Other theft at about 5% and vehicle crime at about 4% both come in under their national shares of 7% and 5%. The biggest heading reads worse than it is: violence and sexual offences is the largest category almost everywhere, and it is a broad statutory grouping that sweeps in common assault without injury alongside far graver things. Treat the mix as one year's snapshot rather than a settled characteristic of the place.
Then there is what happens after somebody reports something. Wiltshire Police charged a suspect in about 10% of recorded offences over the same twelve months, against about 12% nationally, which places the force 32nd out of 42. About 34% of cases were closed with nobody identified at all. Those are force-wide figures rather than this area's own, and they answer a different question from the crime rate. One tells you how much happens. The other tells you how often anyone is found.
Ordinary, then. Slightly above the average of a quiet county, nowhere near the level that should change anybody's mind about a house, and the number worth carrying away is not the crime rate but how seldom a name gets attached to anything afterwards.