Yes, and by a wider margin than most rural towns can claim. Recorded crime runs about a fifth below the district around it. The whole town logs under 500 offences in a year. What it does not have is a police force with much of a record for catching anyone. Safe is the straightforward part of this answer. Resolved is where it gets uncomfortable.
Police.uk recorded 475 crimes across South Molton in the year to May 2026, giving a published rate of roughly 58 per thousand people. That sits about 21% below the North Devon average. Both figures are published rates built on statistical-area populations rather than a headcount of residents, so anyone dividing the crime count by the town's population at home will land on a different number and a wrong one.
Seeing both sides of that comparison matters. Roughly 58 recorded crimes per thousand people here, against roughly 73 per thousand across North Devon as a whole. The gap is real and consistent rather than the artefact of one quiet quarter.
The kind of place producing those numbers is worth describing plainly. The neighbourhoods average around 3,010 people per square kilometre, which means a genuinely built-up core rather than a handful of houses spread across fields. Unemployment sits at about 2% and overcrowded households at about 2%. None of that causes anything on its own. It does describe a settled town where most people are housed adequately and in work, which is the texture behind the figure rather than an explanation of it.
On what gets recorded, the mix comes with a large caveat attached. With 475 crimes spread across 14 categories, a handful of incidents moves a share by several points, so this is a snapshot rather than a characteristic of the place. Violence and sexual offences account for about 50% of recorded crime here against about 35% nationally, and that category needs unpacking before anyone panics: it is a broad statutory grouping that includes common assault without injury, and it is the largest category in almost every area of England and Wales. Anti-social behaviour makes up about 12% locally against about 16% nationally. Criminal damage and arson at about 8% and other theft at about 7% both sit within a point of the national shares. Shoplifting runs at about 5% here against about 8% nationally. Read the mix as one year's arithmetic in a small town, not as the town's personality.
What happens after somebody reports something is a separate question from how safe the streets are, and the two should never be stirred together. Devon and Cornwall Police charge a suspect in about 8% of cases, against about 12% nationally, which places the force 42nd of 42 forces in England and Wales. About 26% of cases are closed with no suspect identified at all. Those are force-wide decisions made across two large counties and carry nothing specific about this town, but they are the honest answer to the question people actually mean when they ask whether the police will do anything. In a town where relatively little happens, the odds of the little that does happening being resolved are not encouraging.
Safety is the strongest thing this place has going for it, and the numbers do not need any help to make that case. Buy here worrying about crime and the worry will be wasted energy, though anyone expecting an arrest to follow a report should be pricing in disappointment rather than the crime itself.