Above-average for the island, by enough to notice and not enough to worry about. The published crime rate runs about ninety-three incidents per thousand per year. Roughly eleven percent above the Isle of Wight average. Five hundred and sixteen recorded incidents in the year to early spring. A small town with a seafront does what small towns with seafronts do.
The published rate of about ninety-three per thousand is calculated on a statistical-area population base that isn't the resident headcount, which means anyone who reaches for a calculator to verify the figure against the population will get a different answer and decide the data is broken. The data isn't broken; the two numbers measure different things, and the published rate is the comparable one. Eleven percent above the Isle of Wight average translates to roughly nine more incidents per thousand than the typical island place sees in a year. That puts Ventnor above the rural villages and the small coastal settlements, and inside the same broad band as the bigger resorts. The five hundred and sixteen recorded incidents include everything reported: shoplifting, criminal damage, public-order matters, the assault that came out of an argument outside a pub, the bike taken from outside a shop. There's no published street-level breakdown in this brief, and inventing one would be worse than offering none.
Above-average for the island means more than the inland villages and less than the busier coastal resorts. Shanklin sits four miles to the north-east and reads calmer in the data because Shanklin's evening economy is gentler. Ventnor concentrates its small commercial centre at the bottom of a steep hill, with pubs, cafés and restaurants on the seafront, the High Street and Pier Street, and concentrated commercial centres read higher in the crime numbers than the surrounding residential streets. The numbers are doing what numbers do. They aren't a portrait of the town. They're a portrait of the bit of the town that has the licensed premises in it.
What the data does not include is anything serious. There's no signal of a violent-crime hotspot, no published evidence of an organised drug economy of any scale for an area this size, and no concentration of incidents that would make the seafront feel different from any other small south-coast town with a similar high street. The most violent passage in the town's recorded history was a German bomber crew with a job to do during the Second World War. Modern crime statistics are tame in comparison. Which is some reassurance.
For most residents, day-to-day life reads safe. The retirees, the working-from-home arrivals, the holiday-let owners and the small population of younger renters mostly go about their lives without incident. Reasonable care with valuables on the seafront on a busy weekend night is the level of vigilance the data supports. Anything more is theatre.
A town that reads moderately busy on the crime stats and quiet on the street. Not the safest postcode on the Isle of Wight, and not anywhere close to the worst. Most residents will never notice the gap between those two readings.