Welcome back to Reading the Research, where I trawl
the Internet to find noteworthy research on autism and related subjects,
then discuss it in brief with bits from my own life, research, and
observations.
Today's article discusses the vulnerability of the disabled population, and the crime rate associated with it.
This is usually common knowledge among most adults with disabilities, but the population in general seems entirely oblivious of it: disabled and mentally ill people are not the perpetrators of crime, they are statistically its victims.
Popular media (looking at you, The Amazing Spider-Man 2) likes to depict the mentally unstable as time bombs, or unhinged menaces. In The Amazing Spider-Man 2, a quirky, downtrodden, "not-quite-all-there" electrical engineer falls into a vat of genetically engineered electric eels, causing him to become able to generate tons of electricity himself. He proceeds to use his newfound powers to rampage through the city, causing blackouts and chaos. In the end, he is outwitted by the hero and killed.
This mirrors the framework I've seen portrayed in newspapers, time and time again, about shooters in schools. While the truth is that we don't know a singular cause for why people take guns into schools and shoot their classmates, teachers, etc, the media loves to point fingers at any diagnosis that shooter might have had. Several of them in the last few years might have had autism. Should we then be wary of every person with autism? Should we then expect those people to eventually turn up in a school with guns?
I shouldn't have to actually answer those questions, but the correct answer is a resounding NO. We are no more dangerous than any other person. Statistically, even less so, because we tend to have less power and less access to things like guns. Instead, we are three times more likely to be robbed, assaulted, raped, and shot. And 1 in 5 of these victims were specifically targeted because of their disability. Human predators, like any other predator, go for the weakest-seeming individuals. Except humans are supposed to be more moral than animals...
This is usually common knowledge among most adults with disabilities, but the population in general seems entirely oblivious of it: disabled and mentally ill people are not the perpetrators of crime, they are statistically its victims.
Popular media (looking at you, The Amazing Spider-Man 2) likes to depict the mentally unstable as time bombs, or unhinged menaces. In The Amazing Spider-Man 2, a quirky, downtrodden, "not-quite-all-there" electrical engineer falls into a vat of genetically engineered electric eels, causing him to become able to generate tons of electricity himself. He proceeds to use his newfound powers to rampage through the city, causing blackouts and chaos. In the end, he is outwitted by the hero and killed.
This mirrors the framework I've seen portrayed in newspapers, time and time again, about shooters in schools. While the truth is that we don't know a singular cause for why people take guns into schools and shoot their classmates, teachers, etc, the media loves to point fingers at any diagnosis that shooter might have had. Several of them in the last few years might have had autism. Should we then be wary of every person with autism? Should we then expect those people to eventually turn up in a school with guns?
I shouldn't have to actually answer those questions, but the correct answer is a resounding NO. We are no more dangerous than any other person. Statistically, even less so, because we tend to have less power and less access to things like guns. Instead, we are three times more likely to be robbed, assaulted, raped, and shot. And 1 in 5 of these victims were specifically targeted because of their disability. Human predators, like any other predator, go for the weakest-seeming individuals. Except humans are supposed to be more moral than animals...
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