Brewer Neil Douglas - Crime and autism spectrum disorder : myths and mechanisms

Crime and Autism Spectrum Disorder

Myths and Mechanisms

Neil Brewer and Robyn L. Young

Jessica Kingsley Publishers
London and Philadelphia

reproduced with permission from Benjamin Wallace/New York Magazine.

First published in 2015

by Jessica Kingsley Publishers

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Copyright Neil Brewer and Robyn L. Young 2015

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Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Brewer, Neil.

Crime and autism spectrum disorder : myths and mechanisms / Neil Brewer and Robyn L. Young.

pages cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-84905-404-1 (alk. paper)

1. People with mental disabilities and crime. 2. Autism spectrum disorders. I. Young, Robyn (Robyn

Louise) II. Title.

HV6133.B74 2015

364.38--dc23

2014048579

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978 1 84905 404 1

eISBN 978 0 85700 773 5

Contents

Acknowledgments

We thank Clare Holmes and Darren Hedley for assistance with literature searching and notation, and Nicole McCallum for referencing assistance.

Chapter 1

SOME BAD GUYS

Every generation has its defining psychiatric malady, confidently diagnosed from afar by armchair non-psychiatrists. In the fifties, all those gray-suited organization men were married to frigid women. Until a few years ago, the country of self-obsessed boomers and reality-TV fame-seekers and vain politicians and bubble-riding Ponzi schemers made narcissistic personality disorderdiagnosis code 301.81 in the American Psychiatric Associations Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, fourth editionthe craziness of the moment. And who among us has not proudly copped to our own OCD or ADD, deemed a mercurial sibling seriously bipolar, written off an erratic ex as obviously borderline, or nodded as a laid-off friend pronounced his former boss a textbook sociopath? Lately, a new kind of head case stalks the landstaring past us, blurting gaucheries, droning on about the technical minutiae of his boring hobby. And we are ready with our DSM codes: 299.00 (autistic disorder) and 299.80 (Aspergers disorder). (Wallace 2012).

Wallaces piece highlights that almost any high-profile person who might have displayed some form of social distinctiveness or awkwardness may have been loosely labelled as being on the spectrum . Identities listed by Wallace and others include Mitt Romney, Barack Obama, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Warren Buffett, Dennis Rodman, Jim Carrey, Daryl Hannah, Slash, Billy Joel, J. K. Rowling, Adam Carolla, Kanye West, Dan Harmon, Clay Marzo, Gary Numan, Abraham Lincoln, Albert Einstein, Alexander Graham Bell, Bla Bartk, Benjamin Franklin, Bobby Fischer, Carl Jung, Emily Dickinson, George Bernard Shaw, George Washington, Marilyn Monroe, Henry Ford, Isaac Newton, Jane Austen, Ludwig van Beethoven, Mark Twain, Michelangelo, Thomas Edison, Thomas Jefferson, Vincent van Gogh, Virginia Woolf, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Alfred Hitchcock, Andy Warhol, Charles Schulz, Howard Hughes, Jim Henson, John Denver, Al Gore, Bob Dylan, Charles Dickinson, David Helfgott, James Taylor, John Motson, Oliver Sacks, Robin Williams, Napoleon Bonaparte, Teddy Roosevelt, Leonardo da Vinci, Elvis Presley, Tom Hanks, Shakespeare, Goethe and even Hans Asperger. The suggestion that any or all of the above artists, inventors, musicians, politicians, authors, actors and other well-known individuals may be on the spectrum has occurred despite the fact that few of these people have been formally diagnosed; indeed, some have even been labelled posthumously. Clearly the suggestion that these individuals may be on the spectrum has sometimes been made in jest. Nevertheless, the tendency to apply the label in the absence of any clinical diagnosis indicates a preparedness to connect the label autism spectrum disorder (ASD) with displays of any behaviour that are out of the ordinary.

The application of the on the spectrum tag has not, however, been restricted to off-the-cuff labelling of high-profile achievers. It has also been applied to individuals such as Nicky Reilly, Robert Napper, William Cottrell, Jeffrey Dahmer, Ted Kaczynski, Adam Lanza, Martin Bryant and Anders Breivik all men who have committed brutal crimes such as rape, arson and mass murder and computer hackers such as: Adrian Lamo and Gary McKinnon. It is of course possible that this diverse array of individuals shares a single pathology that explains their criminal behaviour. But the tendency to invoke the on the spectrum tag when discussing all manner of unusual behaviours highlights just how common the use of this diagnostic term has become and the diversity of the individuals to whom it has been applied.

When peoples behaviour significantly violates social norms it is not uncommon for observers to seek a label that purports to provide some sort of psychological explanation for their behaviour. Often these labels emerge not on the basis of any formal diagnostic procedure but rather from suggestions made by onlookers. The following three case studies describe the behaviour of men for whom the ASD label was applied by onlookers, media or professionals, apparently in an attempt to provide a meaningful and unitary explanation for their extreme criminal behaviour. For each of these cases we (a) outline the criminal event, (b) indicate how the application of the ASD label arose (i.e., the diagnosis) and (c) highlight the involvement of other intertwined and likely causal factors.

Some Major Crimes Linked to ASD

The Crimes of Martin Bryant, Gary McKinnon and Adam Lanza

The Crimes

Martin Bryant was responsible for the largest mass killing by a single individual in Australia. In a shooting spree in 1996, he shot and killed 35 holidaymakers and diners, and injured 21 others, at Port Arthur in the Australian state of Tasmania. He is currently serving 35 life sentences plus 1035 years without parole in the psychiatric wing of a prison hospital. Gary McKinnon, a UK citizen and resident, was arrested in 2002 for hacking into the computer systems of the US Government and was indicted on multiple charges. After ten years of legal wrangling, including attempts to extradite him to the US for trial, the Department of Public Prosecutions has elected not to bring criminal charges against him. In 2012 Adam Lanza shot and killed his mother, 20 students and 6 teachers at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut, USA, before shooting himself.