Soho is one of the least safe places to live in Westminster on paper, and most of what goes wrong here involves someone's property, not their person. Recorded crime runs close to nine hundred per cent above the borough average. A third of it is theft from the person. Violence is a far smaller share than usual. The danger here is losing your phone, and the odds of that are high.
The Metropolitan Police recorded 36,116 crimes in Soho in the year from June 2025 to May 2026. The published rate works out at about 3,910 offences per 1,000 residents, roughly 789% above the Westminster average. That rate is set against the small number of people who sleep here. The crimes happen to everyone who passes through.
Across Westminster as a whole, the rate for the same year was about 440 crimes per 1,000 residents. Westminster takes in Mayfair, Marylebone and the rest of the borough, and still comes nowhere near Soho's figure. The borough average already includes the West End, and Soho is the part of the West End doing most of the work.
The neighbourhood behind the numbers is dense and mostly working. Soho packs in about 7,960 residents per square kilometre on average. About 3% of residents are unemployed, and about 9% of households are overcrowded. Neither figure explains a crime rate like this one, and neither should be read as a cause. The crime here follows the crowds who come for the night, not the people who live in the flats.
What gets recorded is lopsided. Theft from the person makes up about 32% of Soho's crime, against about 2% across England and Wales, and other theft adds about 23%, against about 7% nationally. Robbery is about 4%, against about 1%. Shoplifting, at about 9%, is close to the national 8%. Violence and sexual offences, a broad legal category that includes common assault without injury, make up about 12% here, against about 35% nationally. Anti-social behaviour is about 8%, against about 16%. Soho's crime is mostly about property. Since the 19th century the district has been one of London's main places to go out, and the people who steal from that crowd have been working the same streets just as long.
Whether anyone gets caught is a separate question, and it is one for the whole force. The Metropolitan Police charge a suspect in about 10% of the crimes they record, against about 12% nationally, which ranks the force 33rd of 42 in England and Wales. About 53% of the force's cases close with no suspect identified. That is a force-wide figure for London. It says nothing about how risky any one Soho street is, but a stolen phone rarely makes it back to its owner. Visit any flat you are considering late on a Friday or Saturday night, because the street outside at that hour is the street you will be living on.
On safety, Soho rates poorly: the theft figures are among the steepest anywhere and a report rarely leads to a charge. Someone who keeps a firm grip on their belongings can live with it. Someone hoping to stop thinking about it can't.