Safer than the county around it, which is not the answer most people expect from an old mining town with a rail depot in it. The crime rate runs about a tenth below the Cornwall average. Shoplifting barely shows up. Anti-social behaviour comes in below the national share. The reputation of towns like this one is usually written by people who have never looked at the numbers.
Police.uk recorded 665 crimes across the area in the year to May 2026, which works out as a published rate of about 66 per thousand people. That sits roughly 10% below the local authority average. Both figures come from the same published series and use the same statistical geography, so the comparison is a fair one rather than two different measuring sticks held up next to each other.
The Cornwall-wide rate over the same period was about 74 per thousand. Seeing both numbers matters more than the direction of travel between them, because a bare phrase like below average could mean anything from a rounding error to a different world. Here it means eight fewer recorded crimes per thousand residents than the county as a whole, in a county not exactly famous for its crime wave.
The texture behind those numbers is ordinary. Population density averages around 3,200 people per square kilometre across the area, which is town rather than village and nothing like city. Unemployment sits at about 2% and overcrowded households at about 2%. That is a settled, low-churn sort of place, and the crime picture reads accordingly.
The mix is where a reader can talk themselves into a panic if nobody stops them. Violence and sexual offences make up about 50% of recorded crime here against about 35% nationally, and that number needs handling properly: it is a broad statutory grouping that sweeps in common assault without injury, and it is the largest category almost everywhere in England and Wales. Criminal damage and arson run at about 11% against 7% nationally. Other theft is about 9% against 7%, which is close enough to be unremarkable, and public order at about 6% against 7% is effectively the same. The two that move the other way are the telling ones. Anti-social behaviour accounts for about 10% here against 16% nationally, and shoplifting about 3% against 8%. A town with a national-average shoplifting problem has a busy retail strip. This one does not.
What happens after somebody reports something is a separate question, and the answer is not flattering to anyone in uniform. Devon and Cornwall Police charged a suspect in about 8% of cases over the twelve months to May 2026, against about 12% nationally, which places the force 42nd out of 42 forces. About 26% of cases were closed with no suspect identified at all. None of that is a statement about St Blazey, because charging decisions are made across the whole force area rather than street by street, and it says nothing about how likely something is to happen to you. It says a good deal about what follows if it does.
On safety, St Blazey does well. The recorded rate is below the county's, the categories that make a place feel edgy are the ones running below the national picture, and the honest caveat is about the odds of anyone being charged rather than about the odds of being a victim.