Slough is reasonably safe, a little safer than the borough it belongs to. Crime is slightly below the Slough-wide rate. Antisocial behaviour is less common than the national share. Cars attract more trouble than people do. For a busy town hard against the motorways, the crime rate is ordinary.
Police.uk recorded 18,880 crimes in Slough in the year from June 2025 to May 2026, a published rate of about 103 per 1,000 residents. That is roughly 5% below the average for the Slough council area over the same twelve months. A gap that small could close with an ordinary run of incidents, so Slough is best read as level with its borough and slightly ahead of it, with no claim to a clear lead.
Across the Slough council area as a whole, the rate over the same year was about 108 per 1,000, against about 103 for the town. Both numbers describe the same kind of place, and the town makes up most of the borough. The difference between them comes from the outlying villages on this page, which pull the town's figure slightly away from the borough's.
Slough is dense, with an average of about 8,200 people per square kilometre across its neighbourhoods. Unemployment was about 4% at the last census, and about 14% of households were overcrowded. That is a working town with a lot of people packed into terraces, flats and post-war estates. A place this crowded generates more police calls than a commuter village simply because more people live there.
Violence and sexual offences made up about 39% of recorded crime, against about 35% nationally. That category covers everything from serious assault to common assault with no injury, and it is the largest category almost everywhere, so Slough's share is only a little above the national one. Antisocial behaviour was about 10% of crime here, against about 16% nationally, noticeably lower. Vehicle crime was about 9%, against about 5% nationally, the one category where Slough clearly stands out. Public order and other theft were each about 8%, against about 7% nationally, and criminal damage and arson matched the national share at about 7%. Between 1955 and 1957 Slough was the site of a national road safety experiment, and the cars are still what the town most needs to keep an eye on, though now the risk is theft.
The town's crime rate and what happens after a report are two separate questions. Thames Valley Police, the force covering the whole area, charges a suspect in about 9% of cases, against about 12% nationally, which puts it 37th of 42 forces. About 37% of its cases close with nobody identified. These are force-wide figures and say nothing about how often crime happens in any Slough street. They show how a report tends to end, which matters most to anyone whose car has just gone missing.
Slough is safer than most people expect. Crime is a shade below the borough rate, and for a householder the thing to plan for is a good lock on the car.