Thame's crime rate is level with the rest of South Oxfordshire, almost to the decimal. About 49 crimes per thousand people. The district rate rounds to the same figure. Anti-social behaviour turns up less often than it does nationally. It's an ordinary market-town crime rate, with nothing about it to alarm you or to brag about.
Police recorded 648 crimes in Thame in the year to May 2026, a published rate of about 49 per 1,000 residents. That's the same as the rate across South Oxfordshire for the same period.
South Oxfordshire's rate is about 49 per 1,000, and Thame's is 48.8 against the district's 49.2, a gap so small that a handful of incidents either way would close it. It's best read as equal. Thame neither drags the district down nor flatters it.
Thame is a tightly packed town, with about 4,300 people per square kilometre on average across its neighbourhoods. About 2% of working-age residents are unemployed, and about 2% of households are overcrowded. That's the general character of the place, and none of it explains the crime figures on its own.
Violence and sexual offences make up 37% of recorded crime in Thame, against 35% across England and Wales. It's the largest category almost everywhere, and the legal definition is broad enough to include common assault with no injury, so the local share is close to the national one. Anti-social behaviour is 12% of crime, below the national 16%. Shoplifting is 10% against 8%, public order offences 10% against 7%, and criminal damage and arson 9% against 7%. Other theft matches the national share at 7%. The busy high street shows up in those shoplifting and public order shares. Thame's most serious recorded violence still dates from the early 1290s, when the Bishop of Lincoln and a knight of Edward I fought over the Prebendal and the Church of St Mary, attacking both repeatedly.
When a crime is reported, Thames Valley Police charges a suspect in about 9% of cases, against about 12% nationally, which puts it 37th of 42 forces in England and Wales. About 37% of its cases are closed without anyone being identified. Those figures cover the whole force area, so they tell you how a case is likely to be handled, but not how likely a crime is to happen in Thame. On that question, the force has a weaker record than the town does.
Thame is about as safe as the district around it, a middling result with no hidden weak spot. The more worrying figure is what Thames Valley Police manages to do once a crime has been reported.