Crime was fine, just wasn't implemented wisely imo. Needed other options other than buying your own goods to keep crime down. Maybe gold sinks such as guards to maintain the peace with the guards coming out of your garrison or being permanently tied to the fief. Something else than just the prosperity being low to keep crime down which doesn't really make sense anyway.
But without options on crime, it was annoying and prompted a lot of people to just sit in fiefs which also made a lot of people bored since they did nothing but pop on the map every couple of days to check on the fief and buy goods if necessary. Made a lot of people tune out. Strat was already a time sink then crime made it more annoying.
Crime with more options to it would probably do just fine so people have to watch/maintain their fiefs a bit more and give some more flexibility to those who can take advantage of high crime fiefs.
TBH though I don't know if its worth it to do an overhaul or tweaks. The population might not be there. Its pretty low now although there are random attacks on strat on eu and NA for some reason. I'd be fine with a strat revival but I don't know if there'd be pop to sustain it at all.
