What are the rates of victimisation for people with disability?

Between 2009 and 2018, rates of victimisation for all incident types decreased for both those in the total NSW population and in the disability cohort.

Rates of victimisation in the disability cohort for any type of incident were between 1.47 to 1.71 times higher than those in the total NSW population. Rates  of victimisation between the disability and total cohorts were closer for property-related offences. However, for DV-related and violent offences, people with disability were considerably more likely to be recorded as a victim.

2. What is the profile of victims with disability?

There were 1,495,112 criminal incidents recorded during the period 2014 to 2018, relating to 890,138 unique victims aged between 10 and 74 years. People with a disability accounted for 18% of victims of crime and 24% of criminal incidents (where a victim was recorded) involved people with disability as victims. 

The counting unit in the charts below measures criminal incidents recorded by the NSW Police Force where a victim was also recorded. The charts are not a count of unique people. Where a person was recorded as a victim in multiple incidents, they will be counted multiple times.  

Being younger, female, and/or Aboriginal, were associated with a greater risk of people with disability being victims of violent and DV-related crimes.

Of the 1,495,112 victim incidents between 2009 and 2018:

• 4.8% involved an Aboriginal person with disability.
• 13.4% involved a female person with disability.

• 19.9% were Aboriginal victims with disability and 79.8% were non-Aboriginal. 
• More than half (55.6%) were female and 44.4% were male. 
• Over two-fifths (42.7%) were non-Aboriginal females, representing the largest sub-cohort of victims with disability.