This gets searched a lot, and people asking it mean at least three different things. Worth separating them, because the answers are not the same.
If you mean crime: yes, and it is not close
Molokaʻi has about 7,000 residents and no tourist district for anyone to work. Violent crime against visitors is rare enough that it is not the thing to spend your planning on.
The one real risk is the same one on every Hawaiian island: things taken from parked cars at beach lots and trailheads. Leave nothing visible, and preferably nothing in the car at all. That is a Hawaii rule, not a Molokaʻi rule.
If you mean "will I be welcome": that depends on you
This is what most people are actually asking, and the honest answer has some texture.
Molokaʻi has repeatedly refused large-scale tourism. The west end resort closed and did not reopen. Proposals for cruise ship stops and further development have been fought and beaten. Some visitors read that history as hostility toward them personally.
It is not. It is a community making decisions about its own land, which is a different thing from disliking the person who flew in for four days. Visitors who arrive curious, spend money in town, book the Hālawa hike with the family who guides it and treat the place as somewhere people live are treated accordingly.
What actually causes friction is specific and avoidable: walking onto private land because it looked empty, photographing people and houses without asking, flying a drone over a valley, driving onto a fishpond wall, or arriving with the expectation that somebody is on shift to entertain you. Nothing on that list is about being a tourist. It is about behavior.
The etiquette guide covers this properly, and it matters more here than anywhere else in the state simply because there are so few visitors that each one is visible.
If you mean physical safety: this is the part to take seriously
The genuine risk on Molokaʻi is not people. It is water and distance.
The ocean. Most beaches here have no lifeguard. Papohaku is three miles of beautiful sand with strong current and shorebreak, and it is a walking beach far more often than a swimming one. The safest swimming is the protected water near Kaunakakai and at Murphy Beach on the east end, and even those want a look before you get in rather than after.
Distance. The east end road to Hālawa narrows to one lane with blind corners above the water, and cell coverage is patchy to absent along much of it. If something goes wrong out there, you are not calling anybody quickly. Drive it in daylight, tell somebody your plan, and do not do it tired.
Medical. Molokaʻi General in Kaunakakai is a critical access hospital, which is the designation for a small rural facility. It handles what a small rural facility handles. Anything serious means a flight to Honolulu.
None of that should stop you coming. It should change how you plan the two or three days where it matters.
Solo, and with children
Solo travelers generally find Molokaʻi easy. It is quiet, it is small, and people talk to you. The considerations are the ocean and the remoteness rather than anything social.
With children, the calculation is the medical one. A small hospital and a flight to Oʻahu for anything beyond routine is a genuine consideration with a toddler, and it is worth deciding on rather than discovering. Plenty of families visit and have a wonderful time. It is simply not the island to be casual about a fever at 2am.
What to actually do
Book the car when you book the room, because both run out and the fleet is small.
Fill the tank in Kaunakakai before heading east or west. There is no convenient second chance.
Swim where there are other people, and treat an empty beach as information rather than as luck.
Buy groceries in town. Eat in town. The money staying on the island is the single most useful thing a visitor does here.
If any of this reads as more effort than you want from a holiday, that is a reasonable conclusion, and the worth-it question has its own honest answer.
Check Molokaʻi car availability
The short version
Crime: not the concern.
Welcome: yes, if you act like a guest.
Ocean: the actual risk. Few lifeguards, real current.
Remoteness: the other actual risk. Plan for patchy coverage and a small hospital.
Molokaʻi is one of the safest places in Hawaii to be a visitor and one of the least forgiving places to be careless in the water. Both things are true at once, and most articles on this subject answer the wrong one.
