Young, Violent and Dangerous to Know - AS as cause of crime?

Post Reply New Topic

While I do not believe in this idea of autistic psycho... well I can't really spell it

I do not for one second believe that NO autistic people can do bad things, however it is not the autism which makes them commit the crime, more likely an additional personality disorder, psychosis etc. Also, childhood schizophrenia can sometimes present like autism, so it is possible that some of these high-profile murderers have been mis-diagnosed with autism and their illness has been missed. I don't know really, I've only just woken up...

how many many and what seriel killers have been dianosed with autism.the only killers i have heard of who were autistic were john odgren,josef stalin and the guy from utah

Well the first two modern serial killers which come to mind are Ted Bundy and the "Railway Ripper" (Andrei Chikatilo). Both men were very good at acting and making up a story to entice people into places where the killer could murder them. Neither man seems very AS like.

While two cases do not prove that the AS serial killer is an impossibility what is needed is a decent data set, we would need details of 1000 serial killers to find out if they have AS, I suspect that the incidence serial killers (and other violent criminals) is lower in the AS community than in the general population.

Do you have the same problem with media in the US, as we have?

As fast as someone with asperger is doing something bad here in Sweden, like rape, killing and so on, most of the newspapers (with som exceptions) and all of the commercial television channels (we have both state television and commercial television in sweden, but all of our newspapers are commercial) is very fast with assigning that to asperger, even though statistics has shown that aspies is generally more law-abiding than NTs, so in fact its just bustling.

Fortunately, there has been some big protests against this populistic media behaviour, but its very unpleasant anyway, and makes as a bad rumour among uneducated, parochial people.

When I learned about the Holocaust as a little kid, what I got out of it was this: the vast majority of humans will commit heinous atrocities if put in the right herd environment with a charismatic leader. We're animals, every single one of us, and anyone who wants to transcend their basest instincts to become a truly decent human being cannot rely on the morals of society, especially in today's complex, global community.

It seems silly to speculate about which group is more innately violent than the other. We're all in the same boat--capable of both good and evil, and condemned to be free, as Sartre said.

I hung out with people in high school that I was quite sure were potential serial killers. What I found I had in common with them was our immunity to, and dislike of, peer pressure and social forces. Other people seemed to alter themselves in profound ways around other people without even realizing it. We were the ones who stood outside this gravitational pull, so we had a similar perspective on the world.

Social forces have such a profound impact on NTs, especially when it comes to keeping them from hurting and killing one another, that it's quite understandable they are frightened by people who are immune to such forces. If one proceeds from the assumption that people follow laws and social customs largely because of the need to be accepted, it follows that those who do not feel such needs are likely to break those laws and customs. Hence, the extrapolation that people with AS are likely to be serial killers. If a group of people were unaffected by emotions entirely, like the Vulcans from Star Trek, it would be difficult to identify them as human at all. What if some people didn't age; they died at about 80-100 years old just as we do, but outwardly did not change after they reached the age of 20. Wouldn't people be envious or afraid of people who could pose as being much younger than they really were? We see examples of this with homophobia, where a group is feared because their impulses are so profoundly different from those of most other humans.

I personally can attest there were times in my childhood the only thing that kept me from beating people to death with my bare fists was the conviction that this was wrong, and my interpretation of the Golden Rule that was taught to me at a very young age. I developed a respect for life and a deep sense of personal responsibility for my actions that more than compensated for my lack of social instinct. It is often the case that people do things because everyone else does it, and that thing is profoundly morally wrong (witness the Nazis, slavery, racism, etc.). Being immune to social forces means we're immune to both the positive and negative aspects. It comes down to how we are raised at a young age, and how good our personal inner conscience is. I don't do bad things mainly because it would make me feel terrible about myself. I would think I was a bad person. I don't think this is better or worse, only different. I think both aspies and NTs can be serial killers or saints, good examples of humanity or terrible ones.

Just curious, have you heard of Stanley Milgram's experiment?


As for the book, I have not read it, but from what I have read, it does not sound like a book I'd want to read anyways. It is especially disconcerting that the author even messed up the events and the names of the serial killers! So, what bigger, more important ideas did he miss as well?

And about Aspies vs. sociopaths/psychopaths: I think they have opposite problems. Aspies can feel things, but can't naturally show them. Sociopaths can show feelings, but can't naturally feel things. So, say a loved one dies: an Aspie might be devastated, but no one would be able to tell, because their expression might be completely blank. A sociopath would cry and show all of the socially acceptable ways of grieving, but they wouldn't feel a thing. Aspies can learn how to show the emotions they're feeling, though.

I also agree with a previous posters assertion that Aspies might miss cues that would help them fully understand the situation, but once we know what's going on, we definitely feel empathy. I know that that is certainly the case for me. A sociopath WOULD pick up on all those cues, and would have no trouble understanding the situation - they just wouldn't care.

The simple fact is that it is impossible for anyone to want to believe that some people are simply evil!! ! We as a society NEED to find a reason for why they do what they do, and even people on this list are then saying that people with other disorders are more likely to do so, ie. scizophrenia and the like. Research consistently shows that most people with scizophrenia are more likely to be victims of crime than perpertrators, and more often victims than the neuortypical person.

Then we have the so called term legal insanity and hence they themselves then try to blame the crime on anything other than themselves. No condition makes anyone do anything. It can make it more likely that you will do something, ie. we as people on the spectrum do find social interaction diffiuclt, but it is not impossible. Sure there would be people with any type of condition that commit horrible crimes, and while the condition may in some cases mean it is harder for them to do the right thing, we all know that murder is wrong, and to try to say that something caused you to murder someone is wrong.

If people really have a problem with something and are becoming unwell any mentally healthy person would seek help and would not stop seeking help until they got the help they felt they needed. But no instead most of these people go out and committ horrible crimes and then some lawyers come along and say we can say that xxx condition made you do it, and the fact is jury's buy it.

We do know that the vast majority of people do have some form of mental illness and even more have an intellecutal disability, but that does not mean that all of those people are violent and that people who are enstiens cannot commit horrible crimes. Some of the most beautiful and gental people I know have an intellectual disability and to label them because of others is wrong. Sure having an intellectual disability is hard, having a mental illness is hard, having autism or any other condition is hard, but they do not make us mass murders or anything else.

It may at times be appropraite to take such things into account in sentencing, to ensure that they do get the best chance of rehabilitation, but to use anything as an excuse for a crime is wrong. I have a real issue with the mental insanity defence. I have no problem with people serving term in secure mental health facilites instead of prisons or the like, but I do have a problem with anyone using any condition as an excuse as to be perfectly honest the chance that the person had absolutely no control and no idea is a zillion to one. A person does not suddenly become so voilent they are incapable of knowing that murder is wrong. Psychosis does not cause anyone to be that far out of control, as every single I have ever met, even those hospitalised as a result of acute psychosis, still have some level of reason to know what was going on. Sure it was incredibly hard for them to control themsevles at such times but not impossible to know that murder is wrong.

Yes. I found it rather disturbing that the results came as a surprise to anyone.