When it comes to being around individuals who have special needs, some are better at communicating and being with those individuals than others are. Some acquire that skill naturally while others are educated on the subject. In the criminal justice system, police tend to come into contact with these individuals more so than those of other occupations. This is because individuals with special needs, especially those with autism spectrum disorders (ASD), have a harder time reading social cues and norms which can frighten the general public at times and lead to unnecessary police custody of the individual with ASD. For example, a man with ASD can be sitting in the park watching the children play and not think a thing about it. On the other hand, the parents of the children may get concerned and start thinking that this man is a pedophile since he is with no children and is just sitting in the park watching all of the kids play. This can lead to the cops being called which often can scare an individual with autism and cause them to resist arrest and try to flee the scene. All of these things will often lead to unnecessary force being used against the man with ASD, a restraining order being put on that same man, and him finding himself facing a judge in court all because the parents in that park did not know enough about ASD to know that that man is no threat. This all can be avoided with some further education on the subject of mental illness and the special needs population. To avoid an individual with ASD being unnecessarily arrested and imprisoned, further education in the field of psychology and classes on autism spectrum disorders should be a requirement for those who are pursuing a degree in criminal justice, especially those who will be front-lined or coming into contact with individuals with ASD more often than others. 

There is very little research on the entire subject of autism in the criminal justice system. This is because prisons and jails have overtime become warehouses for the mentally ill and separating individuals with autism from individuals with mental illnesses is very hard for researchers to do when trying to come up with a statistic. There is also not a lot of research that points to individuals with autism making up a majority of the prison systems or indicating that you are more likely to be arrested if you have autism. In fact, individuals with ASD tend to have characteristics that make them either more likely or less likely to end up in police custody. For instance, some individuals with ASD may have trouble controlling their emotions and aggression and can have a hard time understanding the perspectives of other people. They could also have specific behavioral characteristics that attract the attention of police such as being easily frightened or not responding to people when being talked to. On the other hand, they find laws to be “social rules of a particular type” that they are expected to follow (Sarris, Marina). The majority of individuals with ASD also finds law enforcement highly more intimidating than the average person and will try to avoid the police at all costs, doing so by abiding to rules and laws. Nevertheless, it is more often that an individual with ASD attracts the attention of police than not. This is because even though they are more law abiding than other individuals, the loud sirens and flashing lights of police vehicles not only scare autistic individuals but make them frightened enough to attempt to run away. With all of this being said, there is no hard evidence that points to a conclusion that individuals with ASD are more likely to commit a crime than any other person. For example, “a Danish study found that people with Asperger's Syndrome (a form of high-functioning autism) [are] no more likely than the general population to commit a crime; those with classic autism and ‘atypical autism’ [are] less likely than other people to commit crimes” (Sarris, Marina). It is not that individuals with ASD commit more crimes than other individuals but that they end up in police custody as a result of either not answering someone when spoken to, being easily frightened, which both are alarming for most people, or attempting to flee from police custody. 

The problem with autism in the criminal justice system is the fact that majority of the time, autistic people do not need to be put in the criminal justice system. Majority of “crimes” committed by autistic individuals are petty offenses that happen because of their social naivety. As previously discussed, individuals with autism have an exceptionally difficult time reading body language, minor cues, and social norms. Because of this, they often end up in jail because they lack these abilities, not because they committed a serious crime. There is also evidence that reveals that individuals with autism are more likely than other individuals to commit a crime against another person and less likely to commit a property crime such as theft or arson (Sarris, Marina). Those crimes against people rarely are crimes such as robbery or murder but crimes such as simple assault, the least serious form of assault, which often results from the autistic individual’s inability to control his or her aggression. Also, those individuals with autism who commit such crimes are not fully aware that they did something wrong in the first place, this all going back to their troublesome time reading social cues and body language. With all of this being said, clearly prison is not the right place for people with autism. In severe cases, individuals with autism or mental illness need to be given help through a mental health system, not be placed in jail. Part of the reason criminals are sent to jail is to make them learn a lesson. No one has ever wanted to go back to jail, this making criminals think twice before committing another crime once released from police custody. But with autistic individuals, if they are not aware of the crime they committed because of their social naivety, jail is not going to do any good for them. A big part of the problem with autism in the criminal justice system could be fixed if officers got help for individuals with autism instead of sending them to jail or prison. 

A lot of police officers simply do not have the confidence that they need when approaching an individual with autism. When three hundred ninety-four police officers from England and Wales were surveyed, only forty-two percent of those officers said that they were “satisfied with how they had worked with individuals with ASD” (Crane, Laura and Maras, Katie L.). Crane and Maras add that “lack of proper understanding of ASD means that those with ASD may be especially vulnerable in police and wider [criminal justice system] settings” (Crane, Laura and Maras, Katie L.). This lack of understanding can have substantial consequences on the individual with ASD who is being approached and the police officer who is handling the situation, such as being sued or fired. In a court case in Maryville, Missouri just this January, an officer was sued for excessive force against an individual with autism. A teenager, Christopher Thomas Kramer was jogging through his town when he stopped to tie his shoelace. The resident whose yard he stopped in front of asked Kramer, the teenager with autism, if he could help him with something and when Kramer heard the resident shout at him, he became frightened, as any individual with autism would do, and began running again. That resident became suspicious of Kramer’s easily frightened state and called the cops on him. Once the police showed up to the scene, Kramer did not stop his running as he became even more scared by the police sirens and flashing lights. After not stopping for law enforcement, one of the officers pulled out his Taser and threatened to shoot it. Once they finally tackled Kramer, he continued resisting and that is when Officer Rucker told his colleagues that “he was going to deploy his Taser and shot Kramer with the electrical-shock device three times” (Brown, Tony). He was then tased two more times, beaten with a baton, and tased again for the sixth and seventh time. After subdued, the officers realized that Kramer had sustained injuries and called for an ambulance. This situation is not one that is rare. Often police officers are unaware that the suspect they are dealing with has autism, they just think that the autistic individual is being unusually resistant and frightened as a result of being caught in the act of something they were not supposed to be doing. And this is just one of the problems with autism in the criminal justice system. If training on how to identify and handle individuals with autism can be expanded and made a priority, a lot of situations like the one with Kramer would never happen. 

Not only should individuals with autism and their families care about furthering the education and training of police officers but so should the officers themselves. When a police officer encounters an individual with autism and is not sure on how to approach or handle the situation, it often leads to the situation being mishandled which can cause legal trouble for that officer. In 2000 in Chesterfield County, Virginia, a police officer was sued after allegedly beating a seventeen year old boy with autism, Bates Johns. Eventually, the court found that “the officers’ action in detaining [Bates] was a proper investigatory stop, as well as finding that the ensuing confrontation and arrest did not violate either the Fourth Amendment or various disability discrimination statutes” (AELE Mo. L. J. 103). The court also claimed that Bates never told the officers that he is autistic, as if an autistic individual is supposed to know to tell everyone they encounter that they have autism. Police officers need to be trained on recognizing the signs of autism and, if skeptical, asking the individual if they have ASD instead of putting that responsibility on the individual with the mental disability. This entire court case would not have happened if the officer had been properly trained on ASD, how to recognize it, and how to properly deal with situations like these. Individuals with autism, their families, and all officers in the criminal justice system need to be fully aware that this is a problem that needs to be fixed. 

In the perfect world, classes and training focusing specifically on autistic individuals and mental illness will be a priority. However, this cannot always happen because of budgeting and funding in the criminal justice system training units. From the survey of the few hundred police officers in England and Wales, only thirty-seven percent said that they had received training on ASD (Crane, Laura and Maras, Katie L.). In Chicago, Illinois, hundreds of classes have been cancelled over the past few years because there simply is not enough money to keep these classes going. The big problem with this is the fact that a program “that trained officers in how to identify, approach, and work with people suffering from mental illness” was cut entirely (Tribune Wire Reports). This is a problem in itself because officers are still expected to approach and assist individuals with mental illnesses even though they have taken zero classes on how to properly do so. Of course some may argue that if an entire program had to be cut, it had to be cut somewhere and there is no easy way of deciding which program to get rid of. Nevertheless, autistic individuals often end up in jail instead of a mental health hospital or medical system because of the lack of this training in which officers are taught to redirect these individuals into a health facility. 

After finding a solution to false accusations among autistic individuals, the focus needs to be on how we as a society can prevent individuals with autism from becoming the victim of a lot of the crimes that happen today. “Existing research suggests that people with developmental disabilities such as autism are between 4 and 10 times more likely to become victims of crime than those without such disabilities and may be 10 or more times as likely to be victims of sexual assault and robbery” (Chown, Nicholas). This, once again, leads back to their inability to read social cues and their social innocence. But considering we cannot fix that aspect, we must do something as a society to stop victimization of autistic individuals; perhaps longer sentences for people who do such instead of parole. This subject is an entirely new argument on its own and needs to be further researched in order to find a solution that truly works. 

As of right now, the focus needs to be put on furthering police training on the subject of autism spectrum disorders. Although this cannot always happen, it needs to be prioritized more than it is in training units at the moment. Despite the fact that there is no hard evidence pointing to the assumption that individuals with autism make up more of the jail and prison systems than individuals without ASD, they do end up in jail a lot more often than they should. Instead of sending individuals with mental illnesses straight to jail or prison, they should be shown help. A mental health facility is a much better place for individuals with mental illnesses and severe autism than prison. The lack of confidence shown from police officers when dealing with an individual with autism needs to be a top concern in the criminal justice system. The fact that a lot of police officers are not satisfied with the way in which they have dealt with individuals with ASD in the past is a tremendous concern for those individuals with ASD and their families. If fixing the training priorities of police officers can be fixed, a major weight will be lifted off the shoulders of both police officers who often come into contact with autistic individuals, all individuals with ASD, and the families of the autistic community. 
