October 1, 2009

National Crime Victimization Survey: Crime Against People With Disabilities, 2007

This report, administered by the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) and by BJS statisticians, Michael R. Rand and Erika Harrell, Ph.D., are the first estimates of crime against people with disabilities measured by the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS). The NCVS adopted questions from the U.S. Census Bureau's American Community Survey to identify respondents who had a disability. The NCVS questions identified six types of disabilities: sensory, physical, cognitive functioning, self-care, go-outside-the-home, and employment.

The report focuses on the victimization experiences of persons with disabilities, including comparisons to persons without disabilities, disability types, victim characteristics, and crime characteristics, such as reporting crime to the police and the presence of weapons during the crime.  A key finding was that people with disabilities had a 1.5 times higher risk of being victims of violent crimes than people without disabilities. People with cognitive disabilities had the highest risk of being victimized.