Published on 12, July, 2020
I have noticed an increase in the media and defence lawyers using ASD as an excuse for those offenders that commit the most serious of crimes.
I feel the only mental health defence that is permittable is when you are deemed by law to be Criminally Insane.
It really pisses me off when the media say the preprtator is a LONER or has ASD.
I am a loner and have been all my life and recently diagnosed as Austistic, I still knew right from wrong.
I think its offensive to tag ASD to these criminals as us all get tarred with the same brush and people will worry if we are potential killers because of our ASD.
What are your thoughts? Could the NAS not contact the media and tell them to stop saying the preprtator is on the spectrum or ASD?.
Well frankly ASD won't usually amount to an insanity defence. Insanity defence usually has 2 types:
Where ASD applies is intent and state of mind. Lots of crimes have very specific state of mind tests. Consider sex crimes. Lots of sex crimes have as a condition that the perpetrator must have not reasonably believed the other party consented. Clearly what an autistic person might reasonably believe, based on social cues and nonverbal communication, will be different from a neurotypical.
That said you don't get to complain that a defendant is autistic, and that the press report that, or that they are black, or gay, or young or old etc. Yes, people will draw unjustified inferences but so long as the journalists aren't you can't complain too much.
The Southport stabber was a whovian. If he'd been a GTA fan or had a big porn collection they would have blamed that but apparently being a Dr WHO fan isn't a red flag to the media. It's no more rational to link the stabbing to autism than to GTA or porn or Dr Who. But human beings love jumping to conclusions. But that doesn't mean we can ban them reporting he is a whovian etc.