Life with Aspergers

There's a lot of news about autism and crime these days and I think it's worth some open discussion because the reasons are varied but the blame seems to be quite singular.  I don't believe that the amount of crime among individuals on the autism spectrum is any higher than the crime rate for the general population. In fact, many of the attributes of autism such as a preference for isolation, should contribute to it being lower. Nevertheless, there are criminals on the spectrum and there are some attributes which are common to autism which could make an individual more likely to commit a crime. "Us and THEM" There's no doubt about it, people on the autism spectrum often seem different to the general population. This difference in itself creates some issues; The "Us and them" divide often leads to ostracisation within school, workplaces and social groups with people on the spectrum being clearly in the minority. In schools, it can lead to p...

Earlier this week in Sydney, our police fatally shot a woman who was wielding a knife . It later transpired that she had Asperger's syndrome. I didn't comment on it at the time as I was quite busy at work -- and I was also awaiting the backlash of comments to the effect that;  "the police could have shot her in the leg or tasered or tackled her rather than shooting to kill, therefore ALL police are bad" or  "all people with Asperger's syndrome can become knife wielding maniacs" To my surprise and delight, those responses weren't forthcoming.   Instead our media mainly discussed the difficulties that police face in situations like this and the problems that people with Asperger's syndrome have when it comes to understanding police direction. It was a very mature response from our media. I'm not going to go over things here because I didn't know Courtney, suffice to say that my heart goes out to  Courtney Topic's family . ...