Yes, and comfortably so. The recorded crime rate sits below the Cornwall average rather than near it. The village holds 534 people, one road in and one road out, and a ferry that stops at some point. Anybody planning something and then planning to leave has a logistical problem before they start. The honest version is that Polruan is quiet for the ordinary reasons small remote places are quiet, and the figures agree.
Devon and Cornwall Police recorded 102 crimes here in the year to May 2026, which works out at a published rate of about 61 per thousand residents. That sits roughly 18% below the local authority average. Both of those are published figures rather than anything worked out from the population of the village, which is worth saying because the rate is calculated on a different statistical base than the headcount you would get from the census.
The comparison is easier to hold with both numbers in view. Cornwall as a whole runs at about 74 recorded crimes per thousand residents over the same twelve months, against roughly 61 here. Not a dramatic gap, and not a rounding error either.
The texture behind those numbers is what you would expect of a village stacked on a hillside. Population density averages about 1,254 people per square kilometre across the area, which sounds urban until you remember that everyone is packed into terraces on a slope with fields immediately behind. Unemployment runs at about 2% and overcrowded households at roughly 3%. None of that causes anything on its own, but it describes the kind of place producing these figures: small, settled, and short of the anonymity that most crime prefers.
The mix needs a firm caveat before the numbers, because with 102 crimes in a year a handful of incidents moves any share by several points, and none of what follows should be read as a settled characteristic of the village. On that basis, violence and sexual offences accounted for about 54% of recorded crime here against roughly 35% nationally. That category is a broad statutory grouping which includes common assault without injury, and it is the largest category almost everywhere, so the raw share flatters nobody and alarms everybody. Anti-social behaviour ran at about 11% locally against roughly 16% nationally. Public order sat at around 9% against about 7% nationally, and criminal damage and arson at roughly 8% against about 7%, both close enough to the national picture to be unremarkable. Other theft came in at about 5% locally against roughly 7% nationally.
What happens after a report is a different question, and the answer belongs to the force rather than the village. Devon and Cornwall Police charged a suspect in about 8% of cases over the same twelve months, against roughly 12% nationally, which ranks the force 42nd out of 42 forces. Around 26% of cases were closed with nobody identified at all. That is not a measure of how safe Polruan is, and it should not be blended with the crime rate, but it is the realistic answer to whether anyone gets caught. Reporting something here is more likely to produce a crime number than an outcome.
Safety is one of the stronger cards Polruan holds: less recorded crime than the county around it, in a village where strangers are conspicuous and the exit strategy is a single lane. The caveat is what happens next, and that is a force-wide problem rather than a village one.