Developing an Evidence Base for Violent and Disablist Hate Crime in Britain

In the context of there being little robust U.K. data on disabled people’s exposure to violent crime and hate crime, we examined self-reported rates of exposure over the preceding 12 months to violent crime, hate crime, and disablist hate crime in a newly established survey, the U.K.’s Life Opportunities Survey. Information was collected from a nationally representative sample of 37,513 British adults (age 16 or older). Results indicated that (a) disabled adults were significantly more likely to have been exposed over the previous 12 months to violent crime (adjusted odds ratio [OR] = 2.33, 95% confidence interval [CI] = [2.08, 2.61]) and hate crime (adjusted OR = 2.58, 95% CI = [2.17, 3.07]) than their non-disabled peers, (b) the differential risk of exposure to violent crime was particularly elevated among disabled adults with mental health problems (adjusted OR = 6.26, 95% CI = [5.01, 7.82]), (c) the differential risk of exposure to hate crime was particularly elevated among disabled adults with mental health problems (adjusted OR = 10.70, 95% CI = [7.91, 14.47]) or cognitive impairments (adjusted OR = 6.66, 95% CI = [3.95, 11.22]), and (d) these effects were strongly moderated by poverty status with no increase in differential risk of exposure for disabled adults among more wealthy respondents.