‘Do You Have Any Difficulties That I May Not Be Aware of?’ A Study of Autism Awareness and Understanding in the UK Police Service

The autism ‘triad of impairments' will often disadvantage those with autism when they come into contact with the Criminal Justice System (CJS) when compared with people without autism. Existing research suggests that people with developmental disabilities such as autism are between 4 and 10 times more likely to become victims of crime than those without such disabilities and may be 10 or more times as likely to be victims of sexual assault and robbery. Anecdotal evidence suggests that people with autism are the subject of discrimination in the CJS due to a general lack of awareness and understanding of autism and its implications in that environment. This study seeks to assess the current understanding of autism awareness and understanding in the UK police service through the means of a questionnaire, and by comparing the results with an earlier study undertaken by researchers in the USA. The long-term aim is to improve responses by CJS personnel to those affected by autism. Overall, as a broad generalisation, individual self-assessments of competency indicated that, currently, police officers are probably unable to deal appropriately with persons with autism. However, in many cases, self-assessments may exaggerate competence. The US study also found that police officers tended to perceive themselves as competent when they may not have been. Not one respondent in this study had received training from the police service fitting him/her to interact effectively with persons on the autism spectrum.