After writing an article about how older people as a demographic tend to be - as a group - victimized disproportionately/excessively, I was contacted about whether or not people with disabilities (both mental and physical) are specifically targeted for crime, including acts of violence. It’s not an area of criminology and victimology that I was/am particularly well-versed in/familiar with. So, I started to take a look at the research that exists around disabilities and victimization - this is my first of two articles, looking at crime and violence which targets those with cognitive developmental impairments. Next week’s article will look at how those with physical disabilities are targeted.

                It is likely that many crimes committed against those with cognitive developmental issues don’t get reported to the police because of a lack of knowledge concerning the process of reporting, and often when these offenses are reported those involved in the prosecution of such cases are wary about putting those victimized on the stand e.g., for fear that a defense attorney/lawyer would easily make someone with a learning/cognitive disability an untrustworthy/unbelievable witness. This means that the true extent of victimization of this group and the details of the offenses committed against them remain largely unknown. In terms of academic research there is also not a great wealth of literature available. Those who have engaged in this type of research have detailed the difficulties in getting funding along with ethical issues undergoing research concerning a population who may not be fully aware of what they are agreeing to be involved in. As ethical issues in academic research continue to get stricter – as they should – studying these populations becomes much harder, and when this is coupled with a lack of available funding, many researchers will find easier and more available populations to study.

                There is also an issue about how offenses against those with intellectual disabilities are classified. It has historically been found – Sobsey (1994) and Luckasson (1999) – that when crimes against individuals are reported they are classified and referred to as “incidents” rather than  offenses e.g., offenses such as sexual assault are defined as “abuse” and “neglect” rather than as a crime, and is handed off to social services, rather than entering the criminal justice system (CJS) pipeline. As well as this meaning that those who perpetrate such offenses are investigated in a non-criminal manner and escape justice, with those victimized often unable to advocate for themselves; data and information that could be valuable for understanding offending which targets this population is underreported and unavailable. However, there are several pieces of research out there, which highlight some of the issues that those with cognitive disabilities have to deal with regarding victimization.      

The process of de-institutionalization, that has occurred in both the US (the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act 1996) and the UK (significantly the National Health Service and Community Care Act of 1990) saw individuals who had previously been housed in long-stay hospitals, asylums, and/or dedicated residential institutions moved into regular state/council housing and receiving community-based care in these settings. Whilst these policies were intended to be humane and modern, with a focus on dignity, autonomy, and social inclusion, in practice, they often suffered from underfunding and poor coordination between health and social services, meaning that a potentially vulnerable population didn’t receive the support and guidance that they required. In many cases their housing needs were treated the same as anybody else’s, which meant they were often put in projects/estates and other relatively unsafe community settings that saw them come into contact with predatory individuals looking for people to exploit and take advantage of. This significantly increased the risk/chances of them being victimized.

Both in the US and in the UK people with mental health conditions face some of the largest economic penalties of any disability group. In the UK for those with a mental or emotional condition, the rate of employment is often - depending on locale - around 40% or less. In the US, regarding poverty and income levels more broadly, the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF), in 2024, reported that working-age adults with disabilities (both mental and physical) are nearly twice as likely to have incomes below 200% of the Federal Poverty Level compared to adults without disabilities, and this was likely much higher for those with mental disabilities. The other issue with under-employment, apart from the obvious economic ones, is that many people who are vulnerable due to their cognitive disabilities have no activity which takes up a large part of their day. Although anecdotal, when I lived and worked in London many people with mental health issues and cognitive disabilities would buy a day ticket for the London Tube or a local rail network and simply spend the day riding the train. This offered a warm and dry environment and an activity that took up time. Unfortunately, spending this amount of time in public increased their risk of victimization.                    

In the U.S., the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS, 2018) found that people with cognitive disabilities had a violent victimization rate nearly four times higher than those without disabilities, and that those with serious psychological distress were about 10 times more likely to experience rape or sexual assault. In the UK, The Home Office and Office for National Statistics (ONS) data show that adults with mental illness are three times more likely to experience sexual assault and twice as likely to experience domestic violence as non-disabled adults. This is often linked to methods/issues of coercion, trust exploitation, and control dynamics, where offenders/perpetrators target victims who may have difficulty reporting, remembering, or being believed. Some offenders/abusers will use a person’s mental illness itself/cognitive disability to discredit or threaten to discredit them (“no one will believe you”), which when engaging in intimate partner violence reinforces their isolation and the abuser’s ongoing control. This can be especially true when those victimized are dependent on their partner for their daily functioning and well-being. As well as being targets for sexual violence and violence in general, adults with intellectual or psychiatric disabilities are targeted for benefit theft, coercive financial agreements, and fraud because they often rely on others to manage money or housing for them. This can involve family members, including carers and/or acquaintances stealing benefit payments, fraudulently using bank cards, or taking control of disability allowances, with these disability-related financial crimes often not reported or simply misclassified as “family disputes” etc.

One of the great ironies of acceptance and inclusion of those who have cognitive disabilities, such as the education systems in both the US and UK, often incorporating those with such disabilities into regular school classes, is that such individuals have become far more trusting, which ultimately is a good thing and a positive change from the way those with “special needs” used to be treated. However, it has meant that those with these cognitive disabilities have become far more trusting of people in general, that opens up pathways for exploitative individuals to gain access to them e.g., I wrote a few months ago about cuckooing and county-lines, where drug dealers will often befriend those with disabilities and takeover their homes as drug bases. These are often categorized as “mate crimes” where those targeted believe that the dealers are their friends and they are simply helping out a “mate”.

Sometimes we aren’t in a position to directly help vulnerable populations, however acknowledging them and educating ourselves about the issues they face, especially concerning personal safety and victimization may help put us in a better position to do so at a future date, even if that simply involves having an informed and educated perspective.