Peckham is safer than the borough it belongs to, and by a clear margin. The volume is still inner-London volume. Violence takes a smaller slice of the total than it does nationally, while anti-social behaviour and theft from the person take bigger ones. Peckham is a busy place more than a dangerous one, and most of what goes wrong is irritating rather than harmful.
Police.uk recorded 11,211 crimes in Peckham in the year to May 2026, published as a rate of 135 per 1,000 residents. That rate is about 14% below the Southwark average for the same twelve months. For a district this central, that is a respectable result, and the number a buyer most needs is the one for their own street, which the street-level map on police.uk will show month by month for the stretch around any house on the shortlist.
The borough figure is about 158 crimes per 1,000 people, against Peckham's 135. Being the calmer end of Southwark is a relative honour, but it is still an honour, and plenty of districts with far gentler reputations would struggle to beat Southwark at anything.
The setting explains why the totals run high in absolute terms. Peckham packs in about 15,700 people per square kilometre on average, about 5% of residents were unemployed at the 2021 Census, and about 15% of households were overcrowded. None of those three causes crime on its own, and here the rate still comes in below the borough's. At that density, though, the neighbours hear the argument whether anybody calls it in or not.
The mix is where Peckham differs from the national picture. Violence and sexual offences, a wide legal category that includes common assault without injury, make up about 24% of recorded crime here against about 35% across England and Wales. Anti-social behaviour runs at about 23% against 16% nationally. Other theft is about 8% against 7%, close enough to call level, and vehicle crime about 7% against 5%. Burglary is about 6% against 4%. Theft from the person is about 6% here against 2% nationally, which is what happens when a high street has enough people on it to be worth working.
What happens after a report is a separate question, and the answer is force-wide. The Metropolitan Police Service charges a suspect in about 10% of cases, against about 12% nationally, over the same year to May 2026, which places it 33rd of 42 forces. About 53% of its cases are closed with no suspect identified. A Peckham victim is more likely to get a crime number than a name, and that is a verdict on the Met, not on the district.
Peckham comes out above average on safety: below its own borough's rate and lighter on violence than the national mix, with the trade-off paid in nuisance and the occasional lost phone.