1,318 anti-social behaviour reports within a mile of central Exeter in the year to August, down 16%. Violence rose 4%, and July hit a two-year high.
Police logged 1,318 reports of anti-social behaviour within a mile of central Exeter in the 12 months to August 2026. That is 16% fewer than the 1,570 in the year before.
Violence and sexual offences went the other way. They rose 4% to 2,965 reports, and July 2026 had 306, the highest monthly total in the two years we checked.
Recorded shoplifting appears to have almost halved. The fall comes almost entirely from two map points, though, and everywhere else shoplifting held steady (see below).
The figures are the street-level data Devon and Cornwall Police supplies to police.uk. We downloaded them through the data.police.uk API on 4 October. August 2026 is the latest month published. Every figure here covers the same one-mile circle around the city centre, which takes in the High Street, Sidwell Street, the Quay and St Thomas.
August in numbers
Police recorded 690 crimes and anti-social behaviour reports in the circle in August. That is down from 796 in July and up from 677 in August 2025.
| Type | August 2026 |
|---|---|
| Violence and sexual offences | 231 |
| Shoplifting | 122 |
| Anti-social behaviour | 103 |
| Criminal damage and arson | 53 |
| Other theft | 41 |
| Public order | 32 |
| Drugs | 24 |
| Burglary | 21 |
| Bicycle theft | 17 |
| Other crime | 16 |
| Theft from the person | 9 |
| Robbery | 8 |
| Vehicle crime | 7 |
| Possession of weapons | 6 |
A year of change, category by category
One month is a noisy measure, so we compared the 12 months to August 2026 with the 12 months before.
| Type | Sep 2024 to Aug 2025 | Sep 2025 to Aug 2026 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| All crime and anti-social behaviour | 8,997 | 8,007 | down 11% |
| Violence and sexual offences | 2,850 | 2,965 | up 4% |
| Anti-social behaviour | 1,570 | 1,318 | down 16% |
| Shoplifting | 2,038 | 1,082 | down 47% |
| Criminal damage and arson | 523 | 572 | up 9% |
| Public order | 516 | 470 | down 9% |
| Other theft | 496 | 450 | down 9% |
| Drugs | 252 | 224 | down 11% |
| Burglary | 178 | 213 | up 20% |
| Bicycle theft | 142 | 206 | up 45% |
| Vehicle crime | 100 | 154 | up 54% |
| Robbery | 76 | 76 | no change |
Bicycle theft and vehicle crime rose fastest. The numbers are small, so a few incidents move the percentage a long way, but 206 bike thefts in a year is a clear step up from 142. July 2026 alone had 31.
Anti-social behaviour: lower, but not steady
The quietest month in two years was January 2026, with 77 reports. Then May 2026 had 160, the most in the whole series. Summer 2026 was still calmer than summer 2025: June to August had 329 reports, against 437 a year earlier.
The timing matters. Exeter City Council’s new City Centre Strategy cleared the Executive on 29 September. In its consultation, reducing anti-social behaviour ranked first of all the priority actions. The strategy’s own measure of success is “reductions in Anti-Social Behaviour incidents in the city centre”. These figures are the baseline it starts from.
Shoplifting: the fall is in two places
Shoplifting reports fell from 2,038 to 1,082 across the two years. That looks like a halving. It is not.
Police.uk places every crime on the nearest of a fixed set of map points, not at an exact address. Two points labelled “Supermarket”, to the south and south-west of the centre, accounted for 1,098 shoplifting reports in the first year and 129 in the second. Between them they logged 160 in May 2025, then one in October 2025.
Across every other point in the circle, shoplifting barely moved: 940 reports in the first year, 953 in the second.
Police.uk does not say why the two points fell away. A store changing how it reports thefts, a store closing, or a change in how the force maps incidents could each do it. We are not naming the shops, because the data does not identify them. What the figures do not show is a citywide fall in shop theft.
Shoplifting has also climbed back since the winter. There were 46 reports in October 2025 and 122 in August 2026.
Violence: a July spike
Violence and sexual offences are the largest category in central Exeter, as in most city centres. Monthly totals sat between about 200 and 280 for most of the two years. July 2026 broke that range at 306, before August fell back to 231.
The category is broad. It runs from common assault and harassment to the most serious offences, so a rise in the total does not tell you which kind of offence drove it.
What it means for you
- Check your own street. Police.uk lets you look up any postcode and see the month’s crimes on a map. Visit police.uk and enter your postcode.
- Lock your bike well. Bicycle theft is up 45% in a year in the central circle. Use a solid lock, fix the bike to something that cannot be lifted, and keep a note of the frame number so you can report it if it goes.
- Report anti-social behaviour. The figures only count what is reported. Call 101 or report it online through the Devon and Cornwall Police website. Call 999 if a crime is happening or someone is in danger.
About these figures
The data counts crimes as recorded by the police, plus anti-social behaviour incidents. It is not a measure of all crime, because much goes unreported. Locations are moved to the nearest map point to protect privacy, so a count “near” a place does not mean it happened there. The one-mile circle is centred on the city centre (latitude 50.7244, longitude -3.5277), close to the High Street.
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