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Law Enforcement Officers’ Preparation for Calls Involving Autism: Prior Experiences and Response to Training

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Abstract

Highly publicized interactions between law enforcement officers (LEOs) and individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have raised questions about LEOs’ training related to ASD. In the present study, 157 LEOs participated in ASD-specific training and completed pretest and posttest surveys of autism knowledge, confidence, and self-monitoring. The majority of LEOs responded to calls involving someone with ASD in the last year, with 20% of these calls resulting in involuntary psychiatric hospitalization. LEO knowledge of ASD, self-confidence in responding to calls, and self-monitoring of performance increased from pretest to posttest. Compared to male counterparts, female officers were less likely to use force and handcuffs when responding to ASD-related calls. Female officers’ self-confidence increased significantly more than male officers.

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Funding

The training program included within this study is funded by a grant through the Cigna Foundation.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Autism Program, Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital, 880 6th Street South, Suite 410, Saint Petersburg, FL, 33701, USA

    Lauren Gardner

  2. Department of Psychology, Western Carolina University, Cullowee, NC, USA

    Jonathan M. Campbell

Authors
  1. Lauren Gardner
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  2. Jonathan M. Campbell
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Contributions

All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation, data collection and analysis were performed by Lauren Gardner, PhD and Jonathan Campbell, PhD. The first draft of the manuscript was written by Lauren Gardner, PhD and all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Lauren Gardner.

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Conflict of interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Informed Consent

Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

Research Involving Human Participants and/or Animals

All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

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Gardner, L., Campbell, J.M. Law Enforcement Officers’ Preparation for Calls Involving Autism: Prior Experiences and Response to Training. J Autism Dev Disord 50, 4221–4229 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-020-04485-5

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