Disability status and robbery victimization in Peruvian villagers

BACKGROUND // About 15% of the world's population has some degree of disability. Violence and crime primarily affect the Latin American region, especially Peru. This study aimed to determine the association between disability status and robbery victimization in Peruvian villagers in 2017. METHODS // A cross-sectional study of secondary data analysis from the National Specialized Victimization Survey (ENEVIC) 2017 was conducted. The independent variable was disability status, and the dependent variable was robbery victimization; in addition, confounding variables were included. Poisson regression was performed to demonstrate the association, and prevalence ratios (PR) with their 95% confidence intervals (95%CI) were calculated. RESULTS // Records of 32,199 Peruvians aged 18 years or older were included. People with disabilities were 24% less likely to be robbery victims than people without disabilities (PR=0.76; 95%CI: 0.61-0.95), adjusted for confounding variables. However, this association was only statistically significant in women, older adults, and the high socioeconomic stratum. CONCLUSIONS // In Peru, people with disabilities are less likely to be robbery victims than people without disabilities. However, only if they are women, older adults, and come from a high socioeconomic level. In the other population groups, the probabilities of suffering this victimization would be similar between people with and without disabilities.