Re: Stay At Home
Aye, but this is something separate from usual autism causes criminality claims (for which actual statistical evidence is lacking).
Instead it's a general claim that people at risk of suicide should be treated differently by the criminal justice system. Something similar has happened in the UK disability benefits system where there's reluctance to refuse benefits to people at risk of suicide, following a very large of number of instances of suicide following refusal.
It's a tricky dilemma because treating people differently by allowing suicide threat to be a get out of jail free card is unjust, but so is inflicting typical punishments on individuals when you know they'll have unusual consequences out of all proportion to the intended punishment.
So an autism diagnosis gets used as evidence for increased suicide risk and that's not totally unreasonable, but there are many, many other risk factors for suicide. Some much bigger ones than autism. The gold standard for suicide risk is past suicide attempts but if that's the only metric used in these instances there's a danger it incentivises suicide attempts in pre-trial detention for example.
I have a feeling this issue will run and run over the coming decades, and risks politicising mental health in general and provoking a backlash against all the gains in awareness and compassion in recent years. Ugh.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
