Provider Resources

Whether you are in the education field, health field, or provide support services to Autistic individuals and their families you too can play a key role in the Criminal Law process. Your supporting role will begin far before there is any contact with the Criminal Justice system and your due diligence will ideally avoid these contacts from occurring.

On this page you will find the following topics:
 What you need to know about the Criminal Justice System
Using research to drive your services
Sex Education
Quality Documentation
How you can impact change
Legislative Opportunities

What you need to know about the Criminal Justice System

Autistic individuals have a higher propensity to be involved in the Criminal Justice System. It is important for providers to understand that this increase in contact applies to both victims and suspects. In order to best support your clients it is important that you have a preliminary understanding of how individuals you work with may become intertwined in the criminal justice system, the stages within that system, and the roles of those within that system. Although you may not be directly involved in this process it is still vitally important you have some base knowledge in this area in order to best support your clients and their families. The Arc’s National Center on Criminal Justice and Disability has a wealth of information on this topic, a Criminal Justice 101 webinar training can be located here.

Using Research to Drive your Services

As providers there is information that can help you drive your practice in the areas that overlap with your mission and focus. There has been research that demonstrates that there are behaviors that contribute to the increased likelihood of Autistic individuals interacting with the criminal justice system as either a victim or perpetrator.

Some of these are;

·      Perceived Antisocial Behavior
Difficulty reading Social Cues
Obstacles with verbal and non-verbal communication

A study by Howlin in 2004 suggests that four factors predispose Autistic individuals to crimes;

  1. Social Naïveté
    2. Aggression triggered by disrupted routine
    3. Aggression due to social misunderstanding
    4. Perseverative behavior(s) without regard to implications

Other factors of import were lack of empathy, inability to consistently control emotions, and difficulty with moral reasoning.

You can find a valuable article summarizing the research findings in this area and linking to the original sources here.

As education, health, or other support service provider you are the first line of defense to keeping individuals out of the Criminal Justice system. Look for opportunities as an individual provider as well as within your agency to target these areas. Ask yourself and your agency the following questions:

  • Are you targeting social skills?

  • Are you teaching and reinforcing receptive communication instruction early and often?

  • Are you conducting real world or simulated practice opportunities?

  • Are you training parents, family members, and other stakeholders?

  • Are you practicing disruption and misunderstanding in a safe-to-fail environment and then generalizing out with mastery?

  • Are you targeting perseverative behaviors that could be perceived by others as a threat?

  • Are you taking into account, age, race, and size of your client and how that effects their perception in the community?

There are so many questions to consider as providers and it can feel overwhelming. It may even feel as if you are pushing your limits in terms of expertise. However, it is crucial to remember that targeting these areas of social validity can be the difference for your client between entering and avoiding the Criminal Justice System. 

If you are facing insurance denials for attempting to cover these areas of medical necessity for your client please visit our sister organization: The Autism Legal Resource Center.

Sex Education

The Arc’s National Center on Criminal Justice and Disability has a white paper on Sex Offenders with Intellectual Disabilities that providers should familiarize themselves with. This white paper stresses the important of sex education for individuals with development disabilities and highlights that often those in this population do not receive any sex education.

The Arc also has a webinar on this topic that focuses specifically in ASD and the lack of sex education that can be found here.

For many providers who want to teach sex education to this population they are at a loss of where to start. Dr. Michelle Garcia and Brandon Delgado co-wrote a nationally recognized curriculum called Quality of Life Curriculum. The curriculum is itself designed to keep individual with disabilities from becoming victims of sexual crimes or engaging in sexual misconduct. The article The Importance of Proactive Sexuality Education for the Autistic Population, written in part by two Board Certified Behavior Analysts, highlights the guidelines of sex education and the best practices to teach them.

Although ideally sex education will occur early and often for an individual on the Autism Spectrum, this education is still crucial, perhaps even more so if the individual has already had run ins with the Criminal Justice System.

Quality Documentation

As providers most if not all of you are providing documentation for your services, this can range from service notes, to medical records and treatment planning. These documents can be a valuable resource not only to the parents and families but if the individual is ever faced with charges from the Criminal Justice System. It is important that your documentation be well organized, detailed, objective, and timely.

When a parent is seeking representation for their child, or an Autistic individual is seeking out legal assistance for himself or herself records can assist in painting a complete picture for the attorney of the individual’s functioning. It is important that your records highlight discrepancies between intelligence and adaptive functioning. Pervasive deficits and long terms goals should also be made clear and can be key to demonstrating that an individuals has a core deficit related to the symptomology of Autism. Attempts at intervention, but especially failures to respond to interventions for certain behavior or symptom areas should be documented in the records.

How You Can Help Impact Change

Education is the key to impacting change. Thank you for taking the first step in gaining knowledge for yourself in this very important topic effecting the Autism community. For the vast majority of individuals on the Autism Spectrum the first encounter with the Criminal Justice System is going to be directly through law enforcement, although we have discussed better preparing the Autistic individual we also need to educate responding officers.

You can be the difference here, having one to one conversations, or offering to provide free Autism Recognition and Response training to your local police department are great places to start. Autism Speaks has a helpful cheat sheet that can be useful for first responders that can found here.

The Arc’s National Center on Criminal Justice & Disability has a branch called Pathways to Justice, you can find their introductory video here. This program uses a strategic two-step process to;
1) Create a local Disability Response Team (DRT) to identify barriers in the community, and
2) Then work with the DRT to provide a full-day, in person training for key stakeholders.

You can volunteer to help bring Pathways to Justice to your community by clicking here, volunteer today.

Legislative Opportunities

For an overview of policy opportunities and challenges relating to Autism and the Criminal Justice System see this report by the International Society for Autism Research.

Find organizations in your state that are supporting reform in this area. One such organization is the Legal Reform for the Intellectually & Developmentally Disabled based in Virginia. Sign up for email updates from LRIDD here.

Find current legislation on your areas by searching a website such as Bill Track 50, you can get a free citizen account by registering here.

Each state also has their own legislative website that you can use to search and access the full text of proposed legislation.

By keeping up to date on proposed legislation impacting the Autistic individuals we serve we can advocate for helpful legislation or against harmful legislation by calling our representatives, providing in person or written testimony, and mobilizing our communities to do the same.

Monica Palma, M.Ed., BCBA, Esq. is the author of this page.