Hastings is the most dangerous major town in East Sussex and is the second most dangerous overall out of East Sussex’s 108 towns, villages, and cities. The overall crime rate in Hastings in 2021 was 100 crimes per 1,000 people. This compares poorly to East Sussex’s overall crime rate, coming in 48% higher than the East Sussex rate of 68 per 1,000 residents. For England, Wales, and Northern Ireland as a whole, Hastings is the 40th most dangerous major town, and the 625th most dangerous location out of all towns, cities, and villages.

In March 2021, Hastings had the worst crime rate in East Sussex for possession of weapons, with 22 crimes reported and a crime rate of 0.24 per 1,000 inhabitants. March 2021 was also a bad month for Hastings residents, when it was East Sussex’s most dangerous area for vehicle crime, recording 89 crimes at a rate of 0.95 per 1,000 residents. Hastings recorded 28 reports of other crimes during July 2020, making its crime rate of 0.30 the worst for other crimes in East Sussex that month.

The most common crimes in Hastings are violence and sexual offences, with 4,177 offences during 2021, giving a crime rate of 45. This is 8% higher than 2020’s figure of 3,863 offences and a difference of 3.36 from 2020’s crime rate of 41. Hastings’s least common crime is bicycle theft, with 61 offences recorded in 2021, an increase of 7% from 2020’s figure of 57 crimes.