SocWelProj

The transcription discusses the deadly consequences of police insensitivity to neurodivergence, specifically in the case of Ryan Gaynor, a black autistic teenager who was shot and killed by police. It also explores the intersection of blackness and autism and the need for low sensory environments during meltdowns. The discussion then shifts to the prevalence of autism in prisons and the challenges faced by autistic inmates, such as harassment and social isolation. The transcription emphasizes the importance of understanding and supporting autistic individuals during mental health crises, rather than punishing them for their differences. Hi, my name is Samantha Cinelli, and I will be providing an interview that I did with a co-worker of mine, Nirvana Hanna, who is an autistic person and has autistic family members. Hi, I'm Lauren Leachy. I'm going to be interviewing my partner, Magellan Reyes, who is autistic. Hi, I'm Leanna Ramon, and I will be providing statistics among prisons in the context of autism. I want to start our discussion off by telling a story that illustrates the deadly consequences of police insensitivity to neurodivergence. On March 9th of this year, California police officers shot and killed Ryan Gaynor during a mental health crisis. He was 15. He was a student at Apple Valley High School and is remembered by his classmates for his kindness, his warm smile. He'd sometimes skip lunch to help his peers with their math homework. In the past, Gaynor's family had called the cops to handle Gaynor's meltdown, and in all those times, officers handled the situation non-violently. However, this time was different, and it cost Gaynor his life. After the cops were called, Gaynor had actually calmed down and apologized to his relatives. His cousin then called the authorities and said that the situation was handled and not to come. However, the police officers still arrived at the scene with their guns drawn. Deputies Wyatt Eisenbrae and Brandon Clancy shot Gaynor within roughly five seconds of seeing him. He was charging them with a guarding tool to protect himself. The officers claimed that it was a sharp object. However, a lawyer defending the family in a wrongful death lawsuit brought a hula-ho similar to the one that Gaynor used to a conference to show that it actually didn't have a sharp end and that it was rounded. Gaynor's avoidable death demonstrates how the intersection of blackness and autism can cost someone their life. I pull a quote from Morena Kay Chiwa Aniwu, a Texas-based founder of Advocacy Without Borders, a non-profit dedicated to disability justice. They discuss the adultification of young black boys in crisis. When a police officer encounters a black child like Ryan, they see danger. They see someone unruly, a thug. When these people need help and support and low sensory environments, they are treated with police officers with guns and yelling. I asked my autistic partner what he would need during a meltdown and furthermore, what would exacerbate one. Here's what he had to say. I think particularly when I'm going through episodes, and I'm sure other autistic people can relate to this as well, but I want to be in the lowest stimulation environment possible. I often want to go into dark spaces. I want to confine myself to feel safe and having flashing lights, having someone like yelling in an authoritative way, anything like that, just letting me know that I'm safe. Just let alone someone I don't know being around during that would make me infinitely more anxious. So I know without a doubt that it would absolutely make things worse. Emile Durkheim proposed that punishment acts as a form of reconsolidating social norms. Imprisonment and punishments like it signal to our society that disobeying the social order is unacceptable, but also that punishing the disobedient is a form of affirming the collective consciousness. Autistic people by and large have a different perception and internalization of social norms than their non-autistic peers. This can look like anything from presenting physically different in social situations, like what is colloquially known as T-Rex arms, or keeping your hands at your chest, or evading eye contact, to verbally expressing a divergence from the norm, talking about that which is socially taboo or seen as unacceptable without any ill intention. A study done by Kise Izuma et al. published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences says that autistic people largely will not consider the opinions of other people in making decisions, instead turning to their own internal state or moral code when choosing how to react to a situation. Here we have this group of people that largely do not conform to social norms, not out of malice, but out of a lack of perceived meaningful adherence to those norms, and a system in place meant to punish them for it. Liette Ben-Moshe underscores this fact in her commentary on the evolution from psychiatric facilities to prisons, saying, quote, institutions for those labeled as psychiatrically or developmentally disabled that closed down in the 1980s actually reopened a few years later as prisons. Spaces of confinement, like psychiatric hospitals, poor houses, prisons, and institutions for those labeled, quote, mentally retarded, could be perceived as operating on a logic that all feebleminded people were potential criminals. So the punitive measures imposed by society, such as imprisonment, serve not only to discourage deviation from social norms, but to penalize and make invisible autistic individuals for their innate divergence, reinforcing a cycle of societal exclusion. The punishment or even supposed rehabilitation that some may afford the prison system here is meaningless. It serves no purpose but to homogenize our society's neural landscape by confining those who are born different. This is the purpose of prison, not a failing of it. In speaking with a co-worker of mine, Nirvana, who has autism and autistic family members, they shared with me that police involvement in moments of sensory overload is always hostile. While Nirvana themselves has autism, we also discussed their uncle, who's diagnosed with both schizophrenia and autism. Their uncle has a tendency to stem, or engage in repetitive body-centric behaviors, like flapping one's hands or pacing. This can often read to the neurotypical public as something that's hostile or concerning. People's first response is always, like, call the police, and the police are scary as heck. That's something I've realized a lot, is when the police are called to intervene, they, instead of trying to de-escalate the situation, they feel like they're in danger of the person who is autistic that they've been called on. So oftentimes, like, they'll be, like, they'll be overly violent. Like, my uncle has been tased probably more times than I could count. And he has also been, like, they've done, I forget what it's called, but where they put the knee on him because he wasn't responding. But he also didn't realize, like, he wasn't processing what the orders were. So my family's had to deal with the carter estate and him since the 80s. And he's experienced, he was often used as, like, the target when he was in jail. He was easy to manipulate, very, like, gullible, and prone to, like, meltdowns, which meant that when he was in jail, the police often, like, were, harassed him more because he was even less lethal. Inmates with ASD often experience distress in prison due to the challenging and unpredictable environment. They are more vulnerable to harassment, social isolation, and victimization. Their communication difficulties make it hard for them to navigate prison dynamics and routines. Pereira and colleagues in characterization of autism spectrum disorder in prison conducted studies to analyze the characteristics of autism within the prison context. Summarizing and updating the knowledge in this field, they found that the prevalence of autism spectrum disorder among inmates is significantly higher than in the general community, with estimates ranging from 4% to as high as 98%. Autism spectrum disorder is often underdiagnosed in prisons due to various factors such as lack of resources and specific expertise. There are many myths that shroud autism, one such being that autistic people lack empathy. One might be tempted to say, similarly to the normative associations that are discussed in Normala Arvela's article, Crip and Jim Crow, or Blackness as seen as deserving of incarceration, that because people with autism lack empathy, they must be controlled by confinement. While we will return to the idea that, even if this were true, autistic people should be afforded abolition, autistic people, while not a monolith, often have extremely strong emotional responses to others' emotional states, and also strict moral codes, even if not formed by social policing. Adults with autism will experience stronger activation of their neural mirror systems in response to others presenting emotional states in comparison to their neurotypical peers. This is published in the Journal of Autism Developmental Disorder by Adam Smith. Additionally, Dempsey et al. provide evidence that autistic children are more likely to hold to their moral code set when discussing the violation of social norms. What this all goes to show is that even these people with strong emotional responses and deeply embedded moral codes are uniquely, fundamentally at odds with and punished by the carceral state. Were we to forget all other evidence surrounding how deeply problematic policing and prisons are as they currently stand, we are still forced to question what the real purpose of punishment is here. Nirvana shared with me that they are an abolitionist. When I asked what that meant to them as an autistic person, they shared that this might look like using things like a social worker emergency support line instead of running to the police at the first sign of a meltdown. She also expressed that any further method of restorative justice needs to be shaped in such a way that being overstimulated and reacting to a meltdown is not seen as deserving of punishment. Carcerality and punitivity as they exist are antithetical to how autistic people understand social norms, approach others, and exist in their community. Autistic individuals in high-stress situations need space and support for their specific needs during a mental health crisis, not to be punished for their differences. In efforts to recognize autism and learn how to interact with an individual that has autism, police, social workers, and whoever else may intervene should be trained effectively about autism risk and provide strategies to address them.