Plaistow is safer than the borough around it, though that is a low bar. Crime here runs about a tenth below the Newham average. The area is crowded and busy. Theft from people in the street happens more often than it does nationally, and violence makes up a smaller share. The risk is mostly to your belongings, not to you.
Police.uk published a rate of about 132 crimes per 1,000 residents for Plaistow in the year from June 2025 to May 2026, about 10% below the Newham average. Over those twelve months, 9,780 crimes were recorded. For an area this size the total is large. Relative to the borough it sits in, the rate is lower.
Newham as a whole recorded about 146 crimes per 1,000 residents over the same twelve months, against Plaistow's 132. The gap is real but small, and a busy few months somewhere could change it. Whatever is pushing Newham's figure up, most of it is happening outside Plaistow.
A lot of people live very close together here. Plaistow averages about 22,600 people per square kilometre, about 24% of households are overcrowded and unemployment was about 5% at the last Census. None of that explains the crime figures on its own. It does mean more people, more front doors and more parked cars within reach of each other than in most of England.
Violence and sexual offences were the largest category in Plaistow, at about 28% of recorded crime against about 35% nationally. That category covers everything from common assault without injury upwards, and it is the biggest category almost everywhere, so a smaller share than the national one is worth noting. Anti-social behaviour was about 21%, compared with 16% nationally. Vehicle crime was about 9%, against 5%. Theft from the person was about 8%, against 2% nationally, and other theft about 8%, against 7%. Public order offences were about 5%, below the national 7%. A buyer here should worry more about their phone and their car than about their own safety. The street-level map on police.uk shows how this mix falls around a particular road, which is more useful than a figure for the whole area.
Being caught is a separate question from how much crime there is. The Metropolitan Police Service, which covers the whole capital, charged a suspect in about 10% of cases over the twelve months to May 2026, against about 12% nationally. That put it 33rd of 42 forces. About 53% of its cases were closed with no suspect identified. These are London-wide figures and say nothing specific about Plaistow. They do mean a stolen phone is more likely to stay stolen.
Plaistow is a fairly safe place to live, as long as you keep an eye on your belongings. Most of what happens here is theft and nuisance, not violence, and on the area's own numbers it is a safer part of Newham.