The vulnerability of autistic adults to criminal exploitation: Mismatches between legal defense arguments and empirical data

Defense attorneys for autistic criminal defendants sometimes argue that difficulties inferring others’ intentions and motivations—often referred to as Theory of Mind (ToM)—considered to characterize autistic people render them vulnerable to exploitation. In this chapter we examine the empirical evidence for such claims. Current evidence derives primarily from studies of autistic and non-autistic adults’ responding in traditional deception detection paradigms and in several novel paradigms used to probe autistic adults’ ability to detect and respond adaptively to others’ criminal intent during interactions. This evidence does not support the perspective that autistic adults are inherently vulnerable to criminal exploitation, although it does indicate that ToM difficulties and low verbal ability are independent risk factors, regardless of autism diagnostic status. Although marked ToM difficulties are more prevalent in autistic adult samples, they are not ubiquitous, thereby highlighting the importance of basing legal defense arguments on measured rather than assumed ToM characteristics. Despite the recent emergence of methodologies for exploring criminal vulnerability, further significant empirical advances will likely depend on the development of paradigms which assess autistic adults’ ability to respond appropriately when confronted with problematic situations that capture the complexities of real-life interactions.