People With Disabilities Experienced Violent Crime at Twice the Rate of People Without Disabilities
Nearly 730,000 nonfatal violent crimes and about 1.8 million property crimes were experienced by people age 12 or older with a disability in 2008, the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) announced. The violent crimes against people with disabilities included 40,000 rapes or sexual assaults, 116,000 robberies, 115,000 aggravated assaults and nearly 459,000 simple assaults.
The rate of nonfatal violent crime against people with disabilities (40 per 1,000 persons age 12 or older, after adjusting for age) was about twice the rate for those without disabilities (21 per 1,000). The study generated age-adjusted criminal victimization rates for victims with disabilities, who are typically older than victims without disabilities. In general, the age adjustment accounts for victimization rates that decrease as the age of victims increase.