I am not a Killer

[chaoticidealism]

You know that study, the one that's been in the news lately, about how lots of serial killers are autistic?

This one?That study... Yeah, it's bad science, or bad journalism, depending on whether it's the researcher or the reporter who made the leap from "people say you have autism" to "you actually have autism

Comments

[chaoticidealism]

Yep, I've noticed; I get a notification when you link to me. And yes, it's fine.

I really wish I could explain better about this. It's so dangerous for autistic people to get this kind of negative reputation; we're already so vulnerable to abuse and to murder--we don't need yet another rationalization that a murderous parent or staff member can use to explain to themselves why it's okay to abuse or kill that autistic person.

If we really did have an increased risk of becoming serial killers, that would be one thing--I'd be saying, let's find out how people become serial killers; let's find out what it is about autism that makes those things more likely to happen. But--we aren't. We're no more violent than the general population. It's a lie, and it's a dangerous lie.

I don't think these reporters are trying to hurt autistic people. I think they're just going for sensationalism here, and for the comforting idea that "normal people don't kill"--that a person has got to be crazy to kill someone. It makes them feel safer to pretend that we could predict who's going to kill--like if we just get rid of all the crazy people, we could keep ourselves perfectly safe from murderers.

[nightengalesknd]

I don't think the reporters in these instances are thinking about autistic people at all. . .

Normal people don't kill

[chaoticidealism]

If you want to keep safe, don't avoid autistic people, avoid 19 year old males. They are the highest age and sex group for crime: perhaps they have too many hormones and not enough experience to control them. Anyway, when I looked at crime statistics, sex and age (and a childhood background in poverty/long term unemployment) seem to be far more relevant than autism. Hardly any criminal sentence judgments (I have searched over thousands in my state) mention autism or Asperger's - they are more likely to mention ADHD, conduct disorder, etc and things like indigenous background (usually a sign of poverty and marginalisation), and even more so things like drugs and alcohol. It is possible, in my opinion, that a murderer who is autistic will do it differently (perhaps "more efficiently") than non-autistic murderers - and that might make for sensational headlines when it happens. But that has nothing to do with the likelihood of an autistic person being violent. We are - especially the classically autistic - less dangerous than the average NT, and we are far more likely to be the victims of crimes like assault, including sexual assault. Most autistic people I see mentioned in criminal judgments were the victims of the crime, not the perpetrators.