Are autistic people natural born criminals?

Associations between autism and notorious violent crimes are easy to find--they seem almost automatic.Here is one example,and another, andone more. There seems to be anentire book on this theme, though I haven ' t read it.In the scientific literature, you can find powerful deficit models of autism at work in predictions that autistics should disproportionately be violent and prone to criminal behavior. For decades now, examples and claims (just a fewhere,here,here,here) fitting this prediction have been highlighted, while the few dissenting views (e.g.here andhere) have had little effect.Then there ' s political expedience. Unless we receive the usual lobbied-for interventions, autistics will disproportionately display criminal behavior and wind up in jail--or so it is claimed. A few examples from the usual autism politicshere,here,here.Kathrin Hippler and her colleagues deserve high praise for noticing how well-placed they were to investigate these kinds of popular claims. Their recent paper takes advantage of their access to information about the large group of individuals--177 of them--who are former patients from Hans Asperger ' s clinical practice in Vienna.Most (93%) of these former patients are male. All were assumed to score at least in the normal range of intelligence as children, but for most there are no recorded IQ scores. They were born between 1938 and 1979, and on average were diagnosed at age eight (range 3-21 years). In 2010 their average age would be about 5...
Source: The Autism Crisis - Category: Child Development Source Type: blogs