Yes, and safer than the borough it belongs to. Recorded crime runs about a tenth below the local average. The shops take more of the hits than the houses. Unemployment is low. The weak spot is what happens after the crime, not how often it happens.
Thames Valley Police recorded 22,496 crimes across this area in the year from June 2025 to May 2026. The published rate works out at about 104 crimes per 1,000 residents, roughly 10% below the average for the wider local authority. That rate is set against a statistical population, not a head count of the people living on your street, so it tells you the level of the area, not the odds for any one front door.
For the same year, the local authority as a whole ran at about 116 crimes per 1,000 residents, against this area's 104. The gap is not dramatic, but it points the right way, and it is the opposite of what anyone driving in through the busiest parts of town tends to assume.
This is a built-up place. There are about 7,500 people per square kilometre on average, unemployment sits at about 3%, and about 6% of households are overcrowded. That describes a busy, working town rather than a troubled one. Busy towns record more crime because more people are around to be stolen from and to call it in.
The mix looks a lot like the rest of the country, with one exception. Violence and sexual offences make up about 36% of recorded crime here, against about 35% across England and Wales. That is the largest category almost everywhere, and it covers a wide legal range down to common assault with no injury, so the number sounds worse than it is. Shoplifting is the outlier, at about 14% of crime here against 8% nationally, which says more about the retail parks than the residential streets. Anti-social behaviour runs lower, at about 10% against 16% nationally. Other theft sits at about 8% against 7%, public order at about 8% against 7%, and criminal damage and arson at about 6% against 7%. Apart from the shoplifting, the local mix matches the national one almost exactly.
Once a crime is reported, the numbers get less comfortable. Thames Valley Police charges a suspect in about 9% of cases, against about 12% nationally, which puts the force 37th of 42 forces in England and Wales. About 37% of its cases close with no suspect identified. These are force-wide figures covering a much bigger patch than Reading, and they measure what happens after a crime, not how likely one is. Nobody should read that charge rate as a safety rating. They should read it as a reason to fit the doorbell camera anyway.
Reading is a safe place to live, below its own borough on crime and ordinary in the mix, with a police force that is better at recording crime than at charging anyone for it.